Roger Moore is the commanding officer of a Nazi POW camp on the Greek coast. His main task is to use three prisoners ... David Niven, Richard Roundtree and Sonny Bono ... who are experts in antiquities to retrieve valuable archaeological relics for the Reich. A pair of American entertainers ... Elliot Gould and Stefanie Powers ... are picked up by the German army near the camp and became it's latest guests. Moore is not particularly sympathetic to the Nazi cause, so he teams up with his 3 experts and Greek partisans lead by Telly Savalas to take over the camp and steal some extremely valuable items from a nearby mountaintop monastery. This film is clearly meant to cash in on the success of "The Dirty Dozen" and it's imitators, most notably "Kelly's Heroes". It's characters are mostly morally questionable folks who walk a thin line between noble intentions and naked self-interest. In addition, many of the characters, Gould and Bono being the clearest examples, are just raging anachronisms who have stepped right out of the 1970's and into WWII. Unlike "The Dirty Dozen", this film just does not work for me. Major plot points are just frankly unbelievable (the Greek partisans use a brothel that caters to Nazi officers as their headquarters), and the action, when it finally comes, is rather flat and uninteresting. Great cast though ... although Moore should have never ever ever tried to do a German accent.

Hogan's Heroes meets Batman-like camp. Totally and utterly implausible and fluffy. A lot of dumb Germans, etc. But if you go int it thinking that way it's not THAT bad. After all, it is a movie. Lots of explosions and gunfire and flames. It looks like they had fun making it. A nice vacation for all involved. If not just a payday. weird jump to "current times" (1979?) at the end. I saw this twice as a kid at the local town theater. Probably had a pack of Sweettarts and a flat coke. End credits include "lingerie by.......". Definitely wouldn't pay $10+ to see it but if you catch it on cable, give it a try. I'm now trying to make the required 10 lines here for submission.

Roger Moore is the Austrian commandant of a German POW camp located in the Grecian Isles in Escape to Athena. He's got a couple of favorites among the prisoners, an Italian cook in Sonny Bono, an archaeologist in David Niven and a black GI magician in Richard Roundtree. In addition USO entertainers Elliott Gould and Stefanie Powers are shot down in their transport plane and become Moore's prisoners.Moore really hasn't got his heart in the commandant business. He's an antique dealer in civilian life and he relishes the assignment only because of the location where he's also involved in Adolph Hitler's looting of Greek antiquities of which there are many in that area. Niven and company aid him because if they didn't they'd be in the hands of the SS. STill they want there freedom.Which they get when they join with resistance leader Telly Savalas and his mistress, bordello madam Claudia Cardinale. It's rumored there's a lot of hidden loot in a monastery on a nearby hill, whatever Moore hasn't taken for his own private stock for after the war. But Savalas is interested in some prototype V2 rockets located there.Escape to Athena mixes the plot elements of The Guns of Navarone and Topkapi, but they're not stirred too well. The scenery is quite nice and I'm sure the prospect of some paid time in the Aegean Sea might have been a big inducement for all these people signing on for the movie.As he was involved with Stefanie Powers at the time, William Holden gets a small unbilled cameo in a brief scene with Elliott Gould. As it turns out Moore's Prison Camp is also Stalag XVII. That might have been part of the package for Stefanie to go to Greece.It was also plain dumb to make Richard Roundtree a black GI. Americans were not involved in that theater, let alone black soldiers. Now if they had made his character be part of the African colonial troops of the British Empire, it would have made more sense. Then again we couldn't have heard Roundtree call a German soldier a 'cool cat'.The action sequences are done well enough, but the cast here just collected their paychecks and walked through the parts.

In 1963 I bought an 8mm cine camera and immediately began shooting my first (and only )movie.The opening shot(in glorious Agfacolor and filmed on location at the Sussex Downs near Brighton) consisted of a 10 second zoom (the very latest technological miracle) of a cow evacuating its bowels.After this inspired start things went downhill pretty fast and the whole thing ended up first on the cutting room floor and later on the Guy Fawkes Bonfire.I feel that the director of "Escape from Athena" could have learned from my experience.As 8mm film was available only in 4 minute reels at least my masterpiece was mercifully brief.You filmed for two minutes,took the reel out and put it back the other way round before continuing,inevitably "fogging" about 15 seconds at either end,which left you with about 3 and a half minutes of usable footage,so he and I have at least that in common. However,I would caution you about ploughing through this terrible movie just in order to watch the motor-cycle chase,it's good - but not that good. David Niven looks as if he had recently been exhumed,Elliot Gould does an impersonation of Chico Marx that palls very quickly.I'm not sure what Stephanie Powers was doing,but at least she had the good grace to look embarrassed.Claudia Cardinale must have had an unexpected Tax Demand. Roger Moore presumably was at a loose end for a couple of days and needed to keep his eyebrows in training.Telly Savalas gets to do what is without doubt the worst Greek Dance scene in movie history and any film that resorts to featuring Sonny Bono is in dire dire trouble. Anybody I have missed out may consider themselves lucky. I will not mention the plot because plot is not the four-letter word that immediately springs to mind in conjunction with this movie. If there is even an outside chance that you can choose to watch celery grow rather than sit through "Escape to Athena" I thoroughly recommend that you take it.