Horrors of War (2007):

 
Not Just Guns and Grenades

A Review

By
Eric Brooks

Today at 1:00Pm Sci Fi aired a movie called SS Doomtrooper. This review is not about that film. This review is about a much better film that Sci Fi should air someday

that has similar thematic concepts. Both Horrors of War and SS Doomtrooper deal with Nazi initiatives to create monsters to defeat the Allies. The similarity ends there. The people who made SS Doomtrooper undoubtedly spent a lot of money to get actor Ben Cross and a really crappy CGI monster and proved that you can in fact make a  

sow’s ear out of a silk purse even if not the reverse. John Whitney (co-director, co-writer), Phil Garrett (producer, co-writer), and Peter John Ross (co-director, co-writer, producer) spent far less on actors with no names and latex and made a B movie masterpiece.
Horrors of War, as already noted, is about Nazis making monsters to win WWII. Specifically it is about Nazis making Zombie and Werewolf super soldiers. The movie, shot entirely on location in Ohio, brilliantly evokes Germany and France in WWII. In fact director Peter John Ross (who screened the film at the B Movie Film Festival in Franklin, OH where the reviewer saw it) said he was inspired to make the film while on a trip to Germany when he noticed how much the countryside looked like Ohio. Ross used a fleet of WWII reenactors (apparently the new trend in historical reenactment) for accuracy. Every uniform, firearm, truck, tank, badge, hat, and boot tread was dead right. The reviewer is a museum curator who lives in the world of historical minutiae and tried to find fault and could find none. Some of the gear was actually used in WWII! Now that is accurate! This made the film entirely believable and immersive. I almost felt like I was watching Newsreel footage.

The film is not just amazing scenery though. It is a story about people and the encounters with the many horrors of war they have. In this day and age, we are inundated with news footage of these horrors: civilians dying, young men blown apart before they have even really lived, and worst of all minds scarred with countless scenes of terror. All of these horrors are presented in the movie. The monsters are merely weapons wielded by those who create the true horrors of war. This movie centers on Lieutenant John Schmidt (Jon Osbeck) who leads his unit into France during D Day. He watches several members of that unit die at the hands of a German super soldier and is wounded in the engagement. Schimdt is reassigned and ultimately recruited by the OSS (precurser to the CIA) to lead an attack on the lab where the monsters are being made. His new unit is forced to bail out when their transport plane is shot down and trek across occupied France back to base. The unit encounters a German werewolf soldier that ultimately takes revenge on the GIs for an act of brutality against a French civilian family. Several soldier die and one is infected by the werewolf. Ultimately Schimdit leads his unit on an attack on the secret German lab. The film is gritty, dramatic, terrible, and heroic as these men are put through the meat grinder of war. The films shows that no one really wins in war.


This film is amazing on many levels. It is great drama, great period piece, and great good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The effects are great (the CGI planes can hardly be distinguished from the real ones shot during a D Day reenactment) and the props and costumes deadly accurate. In short, the directors left no strings loose. This gets two severed thumbs way, way up!

Reviwers note: Horrors of War should be out on DVD in November. It should be noted that the film was recut from the version screen at the B Movie Film Festival and may be somewhat different in some respects. It should, however, still be great!

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