Rating: C
Dir: Etienne Périer
Star: Michael York, Elke Sommer, Peter Carsten, Anton Diffring
The pieces are in place for this to be a bit of a hidden gem. But the script fumbles things badly in the last act, and you’re left with not much more than reasonably well-crafted airship porn. It’s 1915, and German zeppelins are wreaking havoc on London, dropping bombs from a height to which no enemy fighter plane can climb. Worse may be to come, with a new model of airship being developed by the Boche, and causing concern in Britain. To find out more, Geoffrey Richter-Douglas (York) is dispatched as a fake defector to Germany. The mixed ancestry suggested by his surname give it credibility, as does his family’s familiarity with zeppelin developer Prof. Altschul (Marius Goring).
Richter, as he’s known in Germany, is invited on a test flight with the Prof, his wife/assistant Erika (Sommer) and various military types led by Major Tauntler (Carsten). However, the flight is hijacked by the Major, and is no longer a test but a very serious mission. They are now flying to the highlands of Scotland to loot the national archives, which have been relocated there, and whose loss will demoralize the British population. For different reasons, both the Atschuls and Richter are not happy to discover the changed agenda. Erika has suspected Geoffrey isn’t what he seemed from the beginning. But they are still very much outnumbered and outgunned, as they fly over the North Sea towards their target.
The early going in this is quite well-handled, with the scenario seeming relatively plausible by the standards of seventies spy movies. At one point, it looks like Richter is going to have to kill the entire crew and toss them overboard, one by one, and the tension is high. There’s also a nice pace to the release of information, which keeps you wanting to see where everything will go,. When you find out, is the point at which the wheels begin to get wobbly. Wouldn’t there be easier ways to carry out the heist? It needs to be more clearly-defined as well. I really don’t think nicking a few paintings, or even the Magna Carta (mentioned as part of the archives) would really have much impact. Maybe they should have made it the Crown Jewels that got relocated?
It all unfolds at night, and I honestly couldn’t tell you whether it was a success or not. You get to see the Germans ripping open crates containing scrolls, and that’s about it. Did they bring them back onto the airship? Unclear. I will say, the model work to depict the zeppelin is excellent, with shots of it rising out of the clouds, or floating over a Norwegian fjord (top), that give a real, massive sense of size. Of course, and I trust this isn’t a spoiler, there is the inevitable Hindenburg moment, so you will get to yell, “Oh, the huge manatee!” at your television. I definitely enjoyed doing that. Was it enough compensation for the underwhelming final third? Marginal.