The acclaimed director of THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (J. Lee Thompson) churned out this lurid late seventies pot-boiler at a time when his best days were probably behind him. Ostensibly, a WWII adventure yarn about a Basque shepherd (Anthony Quinn) guiding a scientist (James Mason) his wife (Patricia Neal) and kids (Kay Lenz and Paul Clemens) across the Pyrenees and out of the clutches of the Nazis. Sounds a reasonable set-up on the surface of it, right?

Throw into the mix Malcolm McDowell as Von Berkow, a Gestapo captain in hot pursuit and, yes, still sounds reasonable. I mean, bang in some tunes and the hills could be alive with the sound of them.

However...

At sixty-four Quinn's action man days were pretty much over. Yet out of the cast, he manages to be the most convincing character and at least seems the most physically capable. Mason looks frail and doddery at seventy. Patricia Neal looks like she's already died but someone's forgotten to tell her. There is as much chance of any of these people climbing mountains through deep snow and freezing temperatures as there is of me French-kissing Jessica Biel on top of an iceberg in the middle of the Sahara desert. Neal, especially, has difficulty managing a flight of steps (she was seriously ill in real life). It's ludicrous.

Then to Malcolm McDowell. Not an actor renowned for subtlety, here he seems to have been completely let off the leash. His performance transcends all known boundaries of thespian restraint and spins off into a whole other far distant galaxy of pantomime excess. He is jaw-dropping. This is the most astonishing comedy caricature Gestapo-Nazi madman portrayal ever committed to film. By comparison, it makes his work in CALIGULA seem like John Gielgud whispering the poetry of Betjeman in Winchester Cathedral to an audience of the moral majority. If you have no other reason for watching this film, then I urge you to do so to marvel at McDowell and his interpretation of Nazi villainy. It'll mess with your head. Especially the sight of his underpants with the swastika motif. He later described it as "some of the best work I've ever done." Hopefully he was being satirical.

Throw in some violent action, throat-slittings, finger amputations, burnings, explosions (anything resembling a structure that gets shot at blows up), rape, sodomy, a completely histrionic Captain Oates scene, avalanches and consistently brain-freezing dialogue and there you have it.

It's not a good film, but it is a film that provides a good laugh if you're in the right frame of mind - and providing you can stand the mania and sadism.