When a meek-looking man (Jack Palance), a Nazi war criminal, is discovered on a train to Milan, he fights off a passenger (Andrea Chechi) who recognizes him, and the Nazi doctor must take a hostage (Yvonne Furneaux) to protect himself from the police. With a good cast like this, you’d expect something more than you actually get here. What you get is a lot of talk about what it was like for a Nazi doctor in the concentration camps, but none of it elicits any sympathy for the doctor, who’s main rationale for his crimes is he was “just following orders.” Nor does the viewer particularly hate this guy. Jack Palance is good in this role (with his hair lighter than THE PROFESSOR has ever seen), but he just doesn’t have much to work with except a bunch of cliches. This somewhat rare film doesn’t create much tension, and the direction (by Marcello Baldi) is lackluster and matter-of-fact. The crappy jazz score doesn’t help, the dubbing is atrocious, and the other train passengers are not particularly interesting. This could have been an interesting film. Too bad it isn’t . . . except as a real curiosity for foreign film fans.
