by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

War movies, at their best, are explorations of human emotion. War shows humanity at its best, and its worst. War drives people to mass murder on a global scale. This is uniquely human. It’s savage. Innocent people are dragged into combat and either show true bravery and valor under fire, or they succumb to their demons.

War movies, at their worst, are just bad action movies that don’t really have much to say, aren’t interested in plumbing the depths of the darkness of the human soul, but think that explosions that blow things up real good are cool.

Inconsequential war movies are a whole genre unto themselves. Cannon Pictures made a whole bunch of them back in the 80s starring Chuck Norris. Even the Rambo movies wound up going that route—which is surprising because the first Rambo movie, First Blood, is so good, and is one of the first movies to really take a look at veteran status and what combat can do to a man.

Then, of course, is a sub-genre of the sub-genre: Of all the inconsequential war movies that are more interested in spectacle over story, the ones churned out by Italian studios throughout the 1960s and 1970s might be the most inconsequential. Much like their much more well-known counterpart genre, the “spaghetti western,” these movies are sometimes referred to as “macaroni combat” flicks. They were inexpensive to make, usually boasted one relatively big star that they shot as much as possible in just a few days and rearranged the schedule for, then had it in theaters just a few short months later.

And like spaghetti westerns, these movies varied in quality all over the damn place. While I don’t think macaroni combat flicks ever saw the wild highs of the spaghetti western, which had such masterpieces as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, these war movies were usually solidly fine, with some entries scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Five for Hell, the 1969 movie whose biggest star that they make a point of adding a special block around their name in the credits is Klaus Kinski. Kinski is probably best known for his frequent collaborations with Werner Herzog, who knew how to properly bottle and then release his wild, manic energy to wonderful effect. Five for Hell mostly has Kinski appearing in a handful of sets. About half of the time, he’s either sitting or laying down in a bed. Even his sex scene, which I assume was included in some sort of contract negotiation with him to get him to agree to the picture, is 99% of him simply laying still.

The movie stars veteran of the spaghetti western Gianni Garko as Lt. Glenn Hoffmann, given a special detail by the top brass of the U.S. military to infiltrate a Nazi castle stronghold in WWII and steal plans related the ultra-top-secret “Plan K”. Back at the castle, Klaus Kinski plays the wicked SS-Obersturmbannführer Hans Müller. He doesn’t do a whole lot, but he does sentence a few people to execution by firing squad and lets out a little grin when he witnesses the carnage he’s oh, so proud of.

That’s about all the plot you get. Lt. Hoffmann and company make their way to the castle, have a few hiccups along the way and get into some semi-comedic adventures; we then cross-cut back to the castle which has a much more somber, serious tone. As the whole worlds collide, the comedic elements and silly music are dropped in favor of the more serious tone, as the soldiers make their way through the castle and abscond with the plans.

It's not surprising that Five for Hell is frequently listed as an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s own take on the macaroni combat flick, Inglourious Basterds. Much like the Basterds, Lt. Hoffmann’s men are almost like a kind of comic relief whenever the movie cuts back to them. They’re set up to be the team of ultimate badasses, and they are, in that they get results, but there is time enough to watch one of them tap dance and do back flips to the amusement of his fellow soldiers, for something like five minutes. It keeps going on, and on, and on…

Instead of one of them wielding a baseball bat (Italian westerns are war movies were always big one someone wielding a non-traditional weapon), one of them is an expert throw with a weighted, deadly… baseball. It doesn’t look as cool as a baseball bat, but it does leave some folks with black eyes, and the wacky “womp-womp” music assures us that this shit is hilarious.

All in all, Five for Hell isn’t bad, it’s just not particularly good either, and at 1 hour, 35 minutes long, it feels too long by about half. About half of the movie is filler. Once the action brings us to the climax at the castle, it kicks into gear and all the pieces fall together. It becomes very exciting and fun—and hell, even the goofy comedic stuff leading right up to the final setpiece even works. They have their own “Chekov’s Gun” here in the form of a tactical trampoline (yes, trampoline) and you just know someone is going to use it to clear a wall at the end. And so they do.

Five for Hell is what I would call a “chore movie,” and it works on two levels. Watching it on its own, as I did for the purpose of this essay, was a bit of a chore. But, it might be good background noise for when you have to do actual chores, like folding laundry, doing the dishes, etc. Occasionally you’ll glance up at the TV screen and see something exciting happen, and the plot is so threadbare that if you miss a whole five minutes grabbing your clothes from the dryer, you’ll know you haven’t missed much.