HITLER--DEAD OR ALIVE (1942)

Bizarre B-movie propaganda film, ultra cheap but watchable. Ward Bond is a gangster, just out of Alcatraz after a 10-year stretch. He and his buddies (Warren Hymer and Paul Fix) visit a scientist who is offering a million dollars to anyone who can kill Hitler or bring him to justice--his brother was killed by the Nazis and he wants personal revenge. Bond and friends go to Canada, join the Royal Canadian Air Force (the story is set before the United States officially entered the war), hijack a plane and its pilot (Bruce Edwards), and head to Germany. They are caught and wind up in Dachau (presented as essentially just a prison), and claim to be spies with an important message for Hitler. Meanwhile, the Countess von Brandt (Dorothy Tree), mistress to a Nazi colonel, takes an interest in the fliers--she turns out to be the legendary Rosebud, a Resistance worker who helps to free prisoners of the Nazis. They escape (with Fix sacrificing his life for the rest) and Tree gives them a hiding place; though she's against Bond's murder plot because of possible retaliation by the Nazis against innocent women and children, she is forced to allow them to pose as musicians who accompany her to a social date with the Fuehrer. Joining them is an old acquaintance of Hitler's who, while saving his life from an assassination attempt years ago, accidentally gave Hitler a disfiguring scare on his lip, which is the reason he wears his distinctive mustache. In the climax, Bond gets Hitler (Bob Watson), and shaves off his mustache to make sure he's got the right man and not a double; when the Nazis catch up with them, they don't recognize their cowardly leader and they shoot him dead. Bond is killed by firing squad, but Edwards and Tree escape to the States to spread the message they've learned that it's not just one man but an entire evil movement that needs to be destroyed.

The above description makes the movie sound more interesting than it really is. As a scrappy pulp-fiction anti-Nazi adventure story, Warner's DESPERATE JOURNEY with Errol Flynn is far more enjoyable. The extremely low budget leads to cheap-looking sets and a terrible music score. The actors aren't bad, especially Dorothy Tree (who got her start in talkies in a wordless role as one of Lugosi's undead brides in DRACULA), although Bond gives a weak one-note, over-the-top performance. I like him a lot in supporting parts (GONE WITH THE WIND, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, MALTESE FALCON) but maybe he just wasn't cut out for lead roles. The tone of the movie, if not quite comic, is light, but a scene near the climax of crying children being lined up against a wall and shot feels startlingly out of place. Watson is OK as a comic-book version of Hitler, and there is something satisfying in seeing him turn squealing coward when captured by Bond. [DVD]