Friday, April 29, 2011

1979 - ESCAPE TO ATHENA, light weight action film with a one of a kind 1970's cast.


Typical 1970's action/comedy/war film with a bizzaro cast to put it mildly.


First off, you have the romantic team of Telly Savalas and Claudia Cardinale.  Sonny Bono, and Richard Roundtree are wandering around in it for no particular reason.  Roger Moore is playing a German prison camp officer and Elliott Gould and Stephanie Powers are USO entertainers who are prisoners in Roger's POW camp.  Old time Hollywood star David Niven is also in it playing some sort of art historian good at mowing down German's occasionally.


The plot has something to do with stealing Greek art treasures and German V-2 rockets which are going to be used against the invading Allied fleet.  Lots of stuff gets blown up and lots of machine guns get shot.  This is all kind of standard undemanding action crap for the most part with the exception of an exciting motorcycle chase.  It's shot on location in Greece so it looks real pretty.


The chief reason to watch this junk is Telly Savalas who is an actual Greek.  He walks through his role as Zeno a former Monk.  Savalas acts like this whole save the Allies from the German V-2 rockets plot is basically just a big joke, which it obviously is.

You can spend worse ways to squander your life away then watching Escape to Athena.

125 minutes

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