Hannibal Brooks (1969)

Studio: MGM
Theatrical Release: March 13th, 1969
DVD-R Release: December 5th, 2011
Rating: PG-13
Director: Michael Winner
Review by Craig Sorensen



Hannibal Brooks (Oliver Reed of Gor) and his pals in the P.O.W. camp (including escape happy American Packy played by Michael J. Pollard of Four of the Apocalypse) are given the opportunity to work in a German Zoo during the war and they jump at any opportunity to get out of the camp.  Brooks is put in charge of cleaning up after an elephant named Lucy.  Brooks and Lucy become fast friends.  When an allied bombing strike destroys the zoo and kills Lucy’s trainer, Brooks is put in charge of transporting Lucy to another zoo in Poland, away from the battles.  Along for the ride are milquetoast guard Willi (Helmut Lohner), cook Anna (Maria Brockerhoff) and drunk asshole Nazi Kurt (Peter Carsten of Mr. Superinvisible).  After an altercation with a drunk Kurt which ends up killing him, Hannibal and friends decide to escape to Sweden with Lucy the Elephant.  That’s not as easy as it sounds though, what with smug prick Col. von Haller on their tale, not to mention Packy and his resistance fighters causing problems.

There was a spat of World War Two films in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s.  These were partly spurred on due to the success of Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen and partially due to the Unites States involvement in Vietnam.  Vietnam was obviously a very unpopular war and most of these war films act as a sort of counter-point to the borderline propaganda (and sometimes outright propaganda) of the previous generation’s war films.  At the very least a lot of these films take an irreverent look at war, either playing with the machismo of the genre or outright mocking the genre conventions (see Which Way to the Front?).  Hannibal Brooks falls somewhere in the middle while still trying to throw in some action.  If only it could pick a direction.  As it is, the film feels like it is trying to be everything at once.  It can’t tell whether it wants to be an outright parody, a message film about aggression/pacifism, or an outright action film.  Either one of those would have worked I suppose.  It’s not that this is a bad film, far from it, it’s just that it should be a great film.  There’s a lot of talent here.  You’ve got Oliver Reed in his prime, Michael J. Pollard enjoying his 15 minutes after Bonny & Clyde and it’s directed by Michael Winner.  As it is though the film is an enjoyable, Saturday afternoon time waster.

The center of the film is the relationship between Oliver Reed’s Hannibal Brooks and Lucy, played by Aida the Elephant.  Oliver is in top form.  He’s not completely unhinged Oliver in this (look for Burnt Offerings or maybe Tommy for that) but he does have a few moments of crazy.  Aida the Elephant is also great as Lucy.  I don’t know how to critique an elephant’s performance but it looked like she was doing a good job hitting her marks.  The stand out performance for me though is Michael J. Pollard playing the American war hero-in-the-making Packy.  He’s perfectly cast against type as someone who enjoys being in the military a bit too much.  He get’s the movies best comedic moments and also gets to kill some Nazis.  You also get a small part for James Donald (of Quatermass and the Pit) and Wolfgang Preiss as the villainous Col. von Haller who has some great slimy scenes.

Hannibal Brooks makes it’s debut on DVD as part of MGM’s made-on-demand Limited Edition Collection.  The transfer looks good.  The film is presented in it’s original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and colors seem natural.  As far as I can tell there hasn’t been too much digital manipulation of the image.  It’s cleaned up but there still seems to be a nice film texture to the whole thing, which is nice.  Compression is an issue though.  This seems to be a recurring theme in MGM’s DVD-R transfers.  Whenever there is a lot of fast moving action or detail on screen, the image breaks up into blocks.  They’re charging twenty bucks a pop for these things so you would assume that they could at least burn them on dual-layer discs you know?  DVD-Rs aren’t that expensive,  I just bought a hundred dual-layer DVD-Rs today for about thirty dollars.  The only extra on the disc is a crazy trailer narrated by Michael J. Pollard.