Tuesday, September 12, 2023

STALAG 18

STALAG 17 (1953)
dir: Billy Wilder

STALAG 18
MAD #18, December 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

Comedy about a German WWII prisoner of war camp, narrated by Cookie (Gil Stratton), Sefton's toadie.
The men in the barracks are Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), “The Animal” (Robert Strauss), and J.J. Sefton (William Holden). The one modeled after Archie here is Frank Price (Peter Graves). Sefton is always running some kind of hustle like placing bets on a mouse race, running a still, and buying and selling things on the black market. He has a telescope where the soldiers can peek at the female Russian POW camp across the way.
At the beginning, two of the men try to escape the camp through a tunnel under the floorboards they get in through the stove, but get get shot and killed right as they exit the fence, and are made an example of by the officers. Everyone suspects Sefton is the mole, because he keeps to himself and has life the easiest there.
Holden won an Academy Award for this role. This article was done when you could parody a movie and a year later it would still be in theaters.

Officer Schulz (Sig Ruman) calls all the soldiers out. It turns out Price has been the informant all this time. He's actually a German who's been embedded in the barracks. Sefton is eavesdropping on them and finds this out.
The camp buidings are surrounded by mud and the officers walk across boards to get to them when they make their inspections.
Now that they know Price is the mole in the barracks, they use him as a distraction to help Sefton and Dunbar escape, by pushing Price out and focusing all the officers' attention on him.

No comments:

Post a Comment