Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
However, the American guests are “abducted” and taken to the camp under the guise of realism. They soon learn that this is not Hogan’s Heroes or even Stalag 17 and that this cannot be New Hampshire. Kommandant Heinrich Koenig makes Camp Stalag the real thing as he brutally treats the chosen with scorn and abuse. Soon murders occur while prisoners try to escape from the hell Koenig has made of his “dream” to have one last victory before he dies. Murphy and Seger agree if they do nothing else they will take down Koenig.
CAMP STALAG is a strange entertaining tale that uses reenactment to tell a twenty-first century WW II thriller. Frank and the Kommandant are interesting characters, both weird in their own way. Frank is hung up over his dad’s war years as he glamorizes them while feeling strongly his lack of such experience lessens him as a man. Heinrich seems like a lunatic trying to revise history in a modern context. Thus these two antagonists in their crazy way keep Bill Walker’s thriller from turning into a bad Hogan's Heroes’ one joke plot, but instead make for a deep character study of two opponents reliving the past in the present.