This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The Secret Invasion (1964) ** (out of 4)Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva and William Campbell play convicts who are given an opportunity for parole but to do so they must cross into enemy territory and rescue an Italian general who is being held hostage during WWII. By that description you'd think this Roger Corman film was nothing more than a rip-off of THE DIRTY DOZEN but it would be important to check the dates because this one here was actually released three years before the more popular film. With that said, if THE DIRTY DOZEN was a reworking or remake of this then it was certainly needed because while this film might look good it offers very little else. I was a little surprised to see how flat this movie was but I think it lacks any real emotion and a lot of this is due to the screenplay. The screenplay gives us five characters that we're supposed to care for yet not one of them grows on the viewer to where you care about their situation or really if they live or die in the end. Going on this mission with five characters that you really don't like pretty much stops this film in its tracks. Even worse is that most of them are pretty annoying and this is especially true of the Rooney character. I'm guessing he was meant to give some comedy relief but it's never funny. Silva comes off the best out of the five convicts but it's too bad he wasn't given more screen time. Stewart Granger plays the man leading them into battle but he can't really bring any added excitement to the material. For such a low budget movie the battle scenes at least look very good with the various gunfights and explosions. I also thought the cinematography was impressive but in the end this here just isn't enough to save the film.

Although a low-budget film, "The Secret Invasion" earns a high score from me. It's especially good in portraying men on a mission, partisans, and events rather plainly and humanly -- without the glamour. And the filming location and scenes along the eastern Adriatic coast add to the film. This is a precursor of "The Dirty Dozen," and I agree with those reviewers who think this tops the later film considerably. "Dirty Dozen" had more "glamour" and fun with laughs in the beginning. But "Secret Invasion" was more realistic and it was the first film to use a theme with convicts selected for a special, high-risk mission. It gives but a short time to the training and preparation, but then it gets into the action. It has good doses of action interspersed with intrigue and suspense at every major turn.The plot in "Secret Invasion" is realistic – even for a fictitious war flick. The same can't be said for "The Dirty Dozen" in 1967. The small team of misfits in this film was pulled together from various prisons around the world. That list of noted prisons was interesting in itself; and, these were all men serving as civilian convicts from before the start of the war. In "Dirty Dozen," the misfits were all GIs who were in prison, mostly for brutal killings or other heinous crimes. Now, how realistic was that for the middle of WW II in Europe? Not that movies have to be realistic by any means – fiction is fiction. But a fiction story is all the more entertaining and fun to imagine if the script and plot are at least somewhat likely or possible. In this film, a small group is led by a British Army major, and they are to rescue an Italian general from a prison in Dubrovnik, Croatia (Yugoslavia during WW II and in 1964 when this film was made). It was hoped that he would then rouse the Italian troops to go against the Germans. That would weaken German defenses, stretching them out along the south of Europe, before the Allied landings in the western Mediterranean. This is much more of a realistic and high-minded plan, it seems, than the violence and carnage of "Dirty Dozen" which was just to kill as many top German officers as possible – along with anyone else who might get in the way. The script, direction and filming are very good. The cast has some wonderfully talented actors. All give very good performances. I don't think Stewart Granger gave his role the best he could, but that didn't hurt the film with all the other good roles and the action and intrigue. The shooting of the film in and around Dubrovnik also adds a touch of reality, as well as great scenery and interesting history. The port city of Dubrovnik has stood for centuries and was never once destroyed in all that time. I visited present-day Croatia and Dubrovnik in 2005. The scenes in the film of the town, surrounded by its high wall and jutting into the Adriatic, show the beauty of the place. I walked the wall around the city where one of the chase and gunfight scenes takes place. Dubrovnik became a World Heritage Site in 1979. I highly recommend "The Secret Invasion" as a very good World War II film.

This exciting and so-so war movie produced by Gene Corman packs thrills, suspense , plot twists , lots of action sequences and climatic ending , but doesn't quite hang together. Passable warfare film follows a group of convicts soldiers played by all star cast who undergoes assignment against the promise of free pardons. It deals with Major Mace (Stewart Granger) , a tough commandant , he assigns a motley team(Mickey Rooney ,Raf Vallone , Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva, William Campbell) for a dangerous mission whose aim is to free an Italian General (Enzo Fiermonte) . As Stewart Granger training an outfit of rebels and misfits soldiers for a risked assault in Yugoslavia where they contact partisans. The commando must participate in a suicidal mission, the first to wipe a Yugoslavian little town and after an assault over a strong position located on Dubrovnik , Croacia, where is imprisoned the Italian General. Each member of the squad keeps time by rhythmically snapping his fingers so the kidnap can be coordinated . They wreak havoc and kill Nazis to earn the respect of military higher-ups in an exciting final .This low-budgeted and appropriate runtime warfare film concerns about an incredible lesson of courage set in WWII . This flag-waving film packs frantic thrills, perilous adventures, relentless feats , and buck-loads of explosive action and violence . The noisy action is uniformly well-made, especially deserving of mention the rip-roaring final scenes on the mountains and battle at Dubrovnik city . Fine location cinematography by Arthur Arling and powerful musical score by Hugo Friedhofer . Serious and rough Stewart Granger is good as leader of the motley pack together thwart the the Nazi schemes, as well as the largely secondary cast with particular mention to Henry Silva and Raf Vallone who finish developing a sincere friendship . The film belongs to Commandos sub-genre operating beyond enemy lines whose maximum examples result to be the classics as ¨Dirty dozen¨(Robert Aldrich) , ¨Guns of Navarone¨ (J.L. Thompson) , ¨When eagles dare ¨ (Brian G Hutton), ¨ and ¨Kelly's heroes¨ (Hutton) and other movies that were made during the 60s and 70s regarding wartime adventures about special forces in risked missions . The motion picture is professionally directed by Roger Corman . After his period realizing poverty-budget horror movies as ¨Swamp woman, The beast with a million of eyes, Attack of the crab monsters , Undead¨, then came the cycle of tales of terror based on Poe as ¨ House of Usher, Pit and pendulum, The raven , Tales of terror, The masque of the red death ¨ , and meanwhile Corman made this passable war film that achieved limited success.

Although producer/director Roger Corman is known for his "economical" pictures, this World War II actioner belies its $600,000 budget (small by conventional Hollywood standards, but an epic for Corman) and is a well-acted, tightly directed, enjoyable not-quite-so-little picture. The story of a group of misfit Allied soldiers sent to rescue an important Italian general who has been imprisoned by the Nazis, Corman makes good use of the Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, locations and a cast consisting of much better actors then he usually got, especially Mickey Rooney, Stewart Granger and Henry Silva (in an outstanding performance as a taciturn, deadly killer who isn't quite as cold-blooded as he seems). Even Edd Byrnes is far less annoying than usual, and turns in a good job. The action scenes are very well handled, the picture looks much more expensive than its budget would indicate, and it actually garnered some of the best reviews of Corman's career up to that time, and deservedly so. It's a good one (and compares favorably to "The Dirty Dozen," which it preceded). Check it out.