Fooling Hitler (2004) (TV)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

Philip Smith

Writer:

Philip Smith (writer)

Release Date:

24 October 2004 (UK)

Genre:

History | War

Tagline:

The true story of the greatest deception of world War Two

Plot:

The true story of the greatest deception of WW2: one which helped change the course of the war itself.

Plot Keywords:

Deception | Decoy | Hoax | Battle Of Britain | WWII

Cast

Jason Durr	...	Lt. Col. Strangeways
Howard Attfield	...	Col. Turner
Grant Burgin	...	Sergeant Granger
Dorian Healy	...	Major Barkus
Coral Beed	...	Lady Elizabeth Clemens
Peter Pacey	...	Dennis Wheatley
Nigel Williams	...	Brigadier Boyson
Roger Barclay	...	Major T.A. Robertson
Peter Wickham	...	General Mansfield
Matt Canavan	...	Private Williams
Kieron Jecchinis	...	Vicar (as Kieron Jecchins)
Jeff Harding	...	General Stimson
Richard Lintern	...	Col. Bevan
Richard Wills-Cotton	...	Douglas Fairbanks Junior
Daniel Hart	...	Corporal Collins

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

England, UK

Company:

Tiger Aspect Productions

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Towards the end of the film one of the dummy camps is overflown by a computer generated JU87 Stuka. This clearly has no undercarriage whereas all marks of Stuka had permanently fixed down landing gear. Nor would such a slow vulnerable a/c be used for low level reconnaissance.

almost an epic, but still worth watching.

Essentially a very good and long overdue concept for a film / miniseries / drama-doc, but struggling to cope with an obviously pitiful budget and a truly awful script.

Most of the cast did their best - but seemed to be on day-release from otherwise more exciting projects, some of them trying too hard to make something of their highly compressed roles and mangled text - the Dennis Wheatly character tottering on the edge of hammy camp.

Its a really strong concept, how British ( and later American ) tech-bods came up with countless concepts to fool, be muddle and confuse the Germans on a shoestring budget - from thousands of plywood aircraft to draw fire away from real aerodromes - to exploding rats and dummy parachutists, its examines the triumph of imagination and creativity over brute force, many of the ideas were original and intriguing - with plenty of humour and human interest, but it was handicapped by an obviously small budget and really small scale direction, in parts it came across as a dramatised educational program from the late '70's.

You never know - perhaps someone with deeper pockets will see this and realise that the foundation of a very good film is in here - after all -' someone' thought Enigma was a good idea, and as 'Downfall' has shown us, you can produce an astonishing quality war film based in the confines of a bunker - so why not one with the 'Back-room-boys'?