Bullet Points: The 25th Reich

I thought the concept of this movie sounded like fun. Anytime soldiers go back in time and get to do cool shit in the past I am game. The Final Countdown was cool. Time Slip is a Chad Cruise favorite (more to come on that gem soon), and even that shitty Paul Walker time travel movie had a couple of decent parts. The fact is that time travel war movies have the potential to be really cool as they can really go anywhere since the element of time travel has pretty much dissolved any notion of realism. With that being said, this movie failed at every possible turn. I really like the old serials from the 1930’s and 1940’s but this Australian pile of trash will stay with me for a while as how not to do one of those. Read on for my Bullet Points…if you dare.

The Gist: Thought to be on a mission to retrieve two lost animals, a group of American G.I.’s wander around Austrailia until it is found out that one of them has been working towards a different mission altogether. They were sent by an OSS Colonel to travel back in time and find an object which could be brought back to fight the Nazi’s with.

The Cast: Not a single one of the actors playing their subsequent roles had me convinced that they were actually from where they were supposed to be from. You have the most stereotypical Jewish guy, Italian Brooklyn-ite, and Southern redneck idiot that ever existed on screen. None of the men did a very good job and that make is considerably worse because 90% of the movie is them on screen just talking about random shit.

Searching for pumas….it sounds like some shitty alternative rock band.

The Villain: I guess the villain would be the Nazi’s but I think that the villain is the production team of this movie. It was absolutely horrendous. I can’t imagine someone reading this script and thinking that it would be a good idea to spend so much time putting it together only to have it be a waste of time. You couldn’t pay me to watch a sequel to this movie.

Why wouldn’t the Nazi’s build some giant swastikas that turned people into robot spiders??

The Action: The idea of the movie is much better than the finished product. If I told you it was a movie where American WW2 soldiers travel back in time to recover an object to fight the Nazi’s with then it would probably pique your interest. The problem is that it spends about 70 minutes of the 84 minute runtime before our guys do anything. They mostly just walk around the same bit of forest for a majority of the film. At one point a giant flying swastika appears and turns a guy into a big robotic spider. Whoever thought of that should just do us a favor and leap out of a tall building.

Here is the scene where the main character gets raped by the Nazi robot spider. Not trying to joke, that’s what is actually happening here.

Take it Home:

• Favorite Quote: “If we do get invaded and there is a last stand, it’ll be in Brooklyn.”
• A bad sign: It’s usually not a good sign for a movie when the best part is the opening title sequence.
• VERSUS: I could have turned this post into a “VERSUS” article. It would have been the concept of this movie against the execution of the film. The concept was actually pretty cool while the execution was terrible.
• We got robbed: I feel like we were promised Nazi’s and time travel and we didn’t get either. They filmed on the same location for the 1940’s and for 50,000 years earlier. The only difference was there was more moss on a few stones.
• CGI Disaster: I guess they didn’t have a budget for SFX guys so they had it done by people all over the world. When you see the prehistoric lions in this you’ll think you switched the station to a terrible SyFy movie.

Rating: 1/5