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Disappointment for a huge fan!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

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

This is a poorly made and rather feeble wartime film about a plot by the Nazis to kidnap Churchill and spirit him off to Germany. The name Churchill and the title Prime Minister are never mentioned in the film, and Churchill is referred to only as 'that man', which comes across as ludicrously coy. From the very beginning, when a silly voice-over says three times before the credits: 'Warn that man! Warn that man! Warn that man!', I knew I was in for a grim viewing of a very inferior film. I am a great admirer of Gordon Harker, and here he has a leading role, but the part offers him little opportunity to show off his genuine talents, and the direction is so bad that all he is asked to do is mug some faces, lark about, and make some limp Cockney jokes. The film creaks like an old door hinge. I cannot understand why anyone bothered to put it on Blu-Ray, as if it were a classic. The only kind of classic it is, one might say, is a classic flop.

With my dads birthday coming up later this week,I started looking for movies on the Network site that he would enjoy.Having read about the title in an old issue of Empire magazine,I was happy to spot a film which is the near-forgotten first take on The Eagle Has Landed,which led to me getting ready to see the eagle land.The plot:Coming up with ways to kidnap Winston Churchill,a group of Nazis notice that stage actor Hausemann looks just like Churchill's pal Lord Buckley. Believing that Churchill could be kidnapped from Buckley's mansion, Hausemann and a gang of Nazis sneak into Britain.Knocking Buckley out, Hausemann start practising for Churchill's arrival.As rehearsals are underway, Hausemann's plans are interrupted by three unexpected guests.View on the film:Sending the eagle high in the sky,Network give the title a spiffing Blu-Ray transfer,with the sound and picture quality likely being far better than when it was shown on the big screen in the early 40's.Rationed to mostly being stuck in one location,co-writer/(along with Vernon Sylvaine) director Lawrence Huntington and cinematographer Günther Krampf give the flick a touch of Film Noir class,as classy low-lighting covers Buckley's mansion and allows the Nazis to hide in the shadows. Based on Sylvaine's own play,the screenplay by Huntington and Sylvaine boils up WWII heroics with variety show Comedy,where the cunning Nazi plan moves at a surprisingly speedy pace,partly thanks to the childish,but funny one liners,which dart across Buckley's mansion,as the eagle lands.

This has the same basic storyline as "The Eagle Has Landed" only in this instance on a rather smaller budget and made at a rather small studio at Welwyn.However in this case the story is set in a country house and there is little action outside probably a combination of wartime and budgetary considerations.The storyline is quite predictable and there are few surprises. The main character is played by that reliable character actor Gordon Harker who combines his usual roles of detective and Cockney tearaway and imbuing it all with his traditional humour. Quite an entertaining film which i kept from its last airing on Channel 4 about 20 years ago.I am afraid that there is little chance of it turning up again on TV in the near future.