El Alaméin (1953) User Reviews

"Battles of El-Alamein"

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 6/10 · 8 April 2000]

Two engagements in Egypt during World War II were called "Battles of El-Alamein".

In the first battle, British forces stopped a German advance across Egypt at 'el-Alamein'; in the second, the British attacked the German at 'el-Alamein' and finally forced them to retreat to Libya...

Scott Brady played many tough-guy leading roles, mostly in Westerns and other low-budget productions like "El Alamein," photographed in Black and White... Brady is cast here as a 'man of action' under fire with his men and suffering the attacks of Nazi soldiers...

A tempestuous, dynamic performer, from Puerto Rico, is about to be born: Rita Moreno.

The dinginess of war, the sad state of this movie.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 17 January 2017]

Is the sand in the desert or over the lenses used to transfer the surviving print of this cheaply made World War II drama made nearly a decade after the end of the war? Certainly, there were some post war films made that covered different territories made after the war, and while this tries to tell a unique story, it is badly filmed, weakly written, and poorly acted, showing a future Oscar winner not at her best.

The first half shows a variety of the allied forces fighting their way through a desert as they deal with the threats of Rommel. They shoot down a Nazi plane, find the German pilot who bails not so friendly, then find a mysterious old man and his flirtatious niece (Rita Moreno) in the middle of the desert. Lead by American Scott Brady, they fight to stay alive, complete their mission, and deal with other various intrusions. I wanted to see Moreno in this early role, having been impressed with her in "The Ring", but found that she basically just read her lines without making any attempt to act beyond looking "cute" and playing "coy". The print is as sandy looking as the desert, although it has above average sound.

The use of newsreels do not help, especially one over a fictional broadcast of a Tokyo Rose type broadcaster, showing Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini and other war villains/heroes in the background. All it does is to confirm how weakly this was prepared, making even the worst war propaganda film made during the war practically a masterpiece in comparison.

Men in a tank

[searchanddestroy-1 · 23 December 2011]

I waited for this are item since a while. I knew it was a Fred S Sears's film, so not a masterpiece. Produced by Wallace Mac Donald, and not Sam Katzman, it's a powerful actioner, but rather corny, as you can guess, even written by Horace mac Coy; not his kind of stories, far from the crime investigating journalists ones. Nothing to do with BEAST OF WAR, about men in a tank during the Afghanistan war, the Russian one, during the eighties. This film is only 66mn length, so you ca watch it without boredom. I don't understand that this movie has not been released more times, on TCM for instance.

Above all, it's only a Fred Sear's film, and not a Samuel Fuller's one.