Wild Geese II is a 1985 British action-thriller film directed by Peter Hunt, based on the 1982 novel The Square Circle by Daniel Carney, in which a group of mercenaries are hired to spring Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison in Berlin. The film is a sequel to the 1978 film The Wild Geese, which was also produced by Euan Lloyd and adapted from a novel by Carney. Richard Burton, who starred in the first film as Colonel Allen Faulkner, was planning to reprise his role, but died days before filming began. Faulkner is replaced by his brother played by Edward Fox as one of the mercenaries. No characters from the original are featured in the sequel.
Veteran mercenary Allen Faulkner trains and then leads a group of 50 hired soldiers in an attempt to rescue deposed President Julius Limbani. After initially being successful the mission begins to fall apart; double-crossed and caught in the open, Faulkner's men are strafed and napalmed by an enemy plane. With what few men remain Faulkner looks to escape the country in an old Dakota aeroplane. With only his best friend Rafer Janders left to board the plane, Janders is shot in the leg and can't catch the taxiing plane. As the hordes of ferocious Simbas are virtually upon him, Janders calls for Faulkner to kill him, which he regretfully does.
London, 1982
As the only surviving Nazi leader in captivity, Rudolf Hess has secrets that could destroy the careers of prominent political figures, secrets an international news network will pay any price to get.
As Alex Faulkner arrives for a meeting, Robert McCann is arguing with Michael Lukas about the delay of a planned rescue of Rudolf Hess.
Faulkner is escorted into the office; there he meets network executives Michael and Kathy Lukas, who ask him to free Hess - a request which he refuses. He does recommend John Haddad as a substitute. As this is happening, former Lebanese American soldier turned mercenary Haddad avoids Palestinian hitmen in London. Later Kathy and Michael hire Haddad to free Hess and get him safely out of West Berlin.
When Haddad arrives in West Berlin he stakes out the outside of Spandau Prison as a jogger while being spied on. He drafts plans of the outside of the prison including guard towers and entrances. The next day Haddad joins a construction team and sneaks away to get into the prison guard entrance. Carefully eluding the guards by studying their timed patrols he drafts floor plans of the hallways and cell blocks.
When he leaves the prison with the construction crew, Haddad is abducted by Karl Stroebling who is a Nazi but works for the Soviet Union. Stroebling and his thugs smother Haddad with a plastic bag over his head to torture him into disclosing details about his mission. Haddad escapes by overpowering the thugs and rolls across the street, barely missing being run over by an oncoming truck as the police arrive and witness the incident.
While recovering in hospital, Haddad is visited by British Colonel Reed-Henry. Reed-Henry questions Haddad but to no avail; he leaves Haddad but suspects he is there to rescue Hess. Haddad leaves the hospital and, with Kathy, goes to Bavaria to plan the mission without interference from Stroebling.
Haddad enlists his old mercenary comrade Faulkner to watch his back. Faulkner, a former British Army officer, is working as an assassin and is an expert marksman. As romance between Haddad and Kathy blossoms, the trio returns to West Berlin to find that Reed-Henry will help Haddad release Hess. Reed-Henry claims that the British secretly want to get rid of Hess because the old man's presence is a reason for the Soviets to have military in the British sector. Once again, Stroebling's thug's attempt to kill Haddad, but this time Faulkner helps him kill all but one of them.
Meeting with Reed-Henry to discuss his plan, Haddad agrees to hand over Hess to the colonel in exchange for help from Regimental Sergeant Major James Murphy. Murphy, an ex-warden at Spandau prison, informs Haddad of the prison routine and helps make the mercenaries look like British Royal Military Police. Stroebling offers to remove a contract on Haddad's life in exchange for Hess and the death of Faulkner. Haddad refuses and Stroebling leaves, frustrated.
The plan is finalised, with the news network, Reed-Henry and Stroebling each believing they will receive Hess. Part of the plan involves a staged traffic accident, so Haddad employs fairground wall of death rider Pierre to perform the deliberate crash.
Attempting to force Haddad into a vulnerable position using blackmail, Stroebling kidnaps Kathy. In exchange for guaranteeing her safety, Haddad must have a member of Stroebling's gang Patrick Hourigan join the rescue group.
Haddad and Faulkner are now joined by Kathy's brother and Lebanese mercenaries Joseph and Jamil. The group, including Hourigan, are trained by Murphy. During one of Faulkner's fever spells, Hourigan substitutes Faulkner's medication with LSD tablets causing hallucinations.
After the training is finished, Hourigan taunts Murphy about an IRA ambush he participated in. Murphy shoots Hourigan dead, putting Haddad in a dilemma over Kathy's safety. Haddad enlists his final team members, Arab businessman Mustapha El Ali and his employees, to take a couple of minor parts in the rescue. To appease Stroebling, Haddad offers Michael as extra insurance.
Haddad must rescue Michael and Kathy from the clutches of Stroebling. Michael creates a diversion for him and Kathy to escape but is killed during the struggle when the guard retrieves his handgun and shoots him. Moments later Haddad kills the guards and rescues Kathy. The plan goes ahead as scheduled but Pierre is killed in the staged accident.
Hess is sedated with an anaesthetic, switched with the look-alike corpse from the other ambulance and placed into a waiting jeep. At the rendezvous point at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Reed-Henry tries to intercept Hess, but discovers that he has been duped into killing Stroebling disguised as a guard.
Kathy, Haddad and Faulkner take a drugged Hess to and from a football game. Together with the Austrian fans, they travel to an East German airport to flee to Vienna. They succeed by killing a curious East German customs officer.
Reed-Henry confesses to his Russian superiors that Hess has escaped with his rescuers and is nowhere to be found. He accepts execution by being shot with his own pistol.
Epilogue
Haddad, and Kathy and Faulkner take Hess to a hotel in Vienna, Austria. He overhears Kathy talking on the phone to McCann about the rescue and Michael's death.
Hess, knowing that he is being exploited, tells Kathy, Haddad and Faulkner that he has no desire to be a part of modern society. He has regrets about the millions of deaths. Haddad and Faulkner try to talk him into accepting his freedom, but he insists on going back to Spandau to live out the rest of his life. The following day Haddad, Kathy and Faulkner take Hess to the French embassy where he turns himself in. An article of a newspaper in the following days tells a story about a false rumour of Hess's escape.
The original film had not been particularly popular in the US but performed better around the world. In April 1984 Richard Burton and Scott Glenn were announced as stars.[2]Roger Moore was asked to reprise his role from the first film, but did not like the sequel's script.[3]Lewis Collins claimed he was originally signed to play Haddad due to a contract with producer Euan Lloyd[4] but the role went to the American Scott Glenn.
Burton said after making the film he intended "to retire again for at least six months".[5] In August 1984, a week before filming was to begin, Burton died of an intracerebral haemorrhage at his home in Geneva. Producer Euan Lloyd had just visited him: "He looked tan and healthy and had just passed his physical examination for the film after a nice holiday in Switzerland".[6] Burton was replaced by Edward Fox.[7]
Hess (1933)
Olivier (1938)
In some ways Laurence Olivier resembled Rudolf Hess.
In January 1985, Thorn EMI split the cost of a five-picture £38 million slate of films they had made, including Dream Child, A Passage to India, Morons from Outer Space, The Holcroft Covenant and Wild Geese 2.[8]
The film opens with a dedication to the previous film's lead actor Richard Burton, followed by a brief summary of that film.
Then-77-year-old Laurence Olivier, who portrayed Rudolf Hess, was in poor health during filming requiring a nurse to accompany him during production.[9] He was also beginning to suffer with memory problems. Edward Fox recalled him labouring for hours on his one long speech. Ingrid Pitt, who acted in the film but didn't have any scenes with him, did have dinner with Olivier during the production and described him as "very old and frail by this time but very gallant".[10] Hess's son Wolf Rudiger Hess said afterwards that Olivier's likeness of his father was "uncannily accurate".[11]
Patrick Stewart appears in a small role as a Russian general. By his own admission, he only took the role to pay for much needed home repairs. He felt his appearance was the biggest embarrassment of his career.[12]
Notes
↑ Andrew Yule, Hollywood a Go-Go: The True Story of the Cannon Film Empire, Sphere Books, 1987, page 137
↑ DIRECTOR WILL BUCK THE ODDS WITH FILM ABOUT GAMBLING Ryan, Desmond. Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 Apr 1984: I.2.
↑ p.286 Moore, Sir Roger My Word Is My Bond: A Memoir, It Books (8 December 2009)
Richard Burton was a Welsh actor. Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and gave a memorable performance as Hamlet in 1964. He was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan. Burton's perceived failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues; his heavy drinking added to his image as a great performer who had wasted his talent. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation.
Spandau Prison was located in the borough of Spandau in West Berlin. It was originally a military prison, built in 1876, but became a proto-concentration camp under the Nazis. After the war, it held seven top Nazi leaders convicted in the Nuremberg trials. After the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, in August 1987, the prison was demolished and replaced by a shopping centre for the British forces stationed in Germany to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.
Thomas Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare was an Irish military officer and mercenary who fought during the Simba rebellion and was involved in carrying out the 1981 Seychelles coup d'état attempt.
Spandau is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land area.
Wolf Rüdiger Hess was a German architect, the only son of Rudolf Hess and Ilse Hess.
The Wild Geese is a 1978 war film starring an ensemble cast led by Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger. The film, which was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, was the result of a long-held ambition of producer Euan Lloyd to make an all-star adventure film in the vein of The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. The plot concerns a group of European mercenaries fighting in Africa. The screenplay by Reginald Rose was based on Daniel Carney's unpublished novel The Thin White Line.
The Sea Wolves is a 1980 war film starring Gregory Peck, Roger Moore and David Niven. The film, which is based on the 1978 book Boarding Party by James Leasor, is the true story of Operation Creek during the Second World War. In the covert mission, the Calcutta Light Horse, part of the Cavalry Reserve in the British Indian Army, successfully sank a German merchant ship in Mormugão Harbour in neutral Portugal's territory of Goa, India on 9 March 1943. The ship had a secret radio which was transmitting information about Allied shipping to U-boats operating in the Indian Ocean.
Euan Lloyd was a British film producer.
Lieutenant Colonel Eugene K. Bird was US Commandant of the Spandau Allied Prison from 1964 to 1972 where, together with six others, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was incarcerated.
Like piracy, the mercenary ethos resonates with idealized adventure, mystery, and danger, and appears frequently in popular culture. Many are called adventurers, filibusters, soldiers of fortune, gunslingers, gunrunners, ronin, and knights errant.
Speer und Er is a three-part German docudrama starring Sebastian Koch as Albert Speer and Tobias Moretti as Adolf Hitler. It mixes historical film material with reconstructions, as well as interviews with three of Speer's children, Albert Speer Jr., Arnold Speer and Hilde Schramm.
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial, is a BBC documentary film series consisting of three one-hour films that re-enact the Nuremberg War Trials of Albert Speer, Hermann Göring, and Rudolf Hess. They were broadcast on BBC Two in 2006 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the trials. In 2015, American Heroes Channel aired the film under an alternate title, "Nuremberg: Nazi Judgement Day".
Code Name: Wild Geese is a 1984 West German-Italian Euro War film directed by Antonio Margheriti and starring Lewis Collins in the first of their three mercenary war films. Despite the films title, Code Name: Wild Geese is not the sequel to The Wild Geese film, but a derivative film. Kim Newman described the film as closer to the director's films such as The Last Hunter and Cannibal Apocalypse.
Spandau is a locality (Ortsteil) of Berlin in the homonymous borough (Bezirk) of Spandau. The historic city is situated, for the most part, on the western banks of the Havel river. As of 2020 the estimated population of Spandau was 39,653.
The Wild Geese is a 1978 novel by Rhodesian author Daniel Carney published by Bantam Books. He originally titled it The Thin White Line, but it went unpublished until its film adaptation The Wild Geese was made.
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate the United Kingdom's exit from the Second World War. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace. He was still serving his life sentence at the time of his suicide in 1987.
The Square Circle is a 1982 novel by Daniel Carney. It was adapted as the 1985 film Wild Geese II.
Susan Miller is a British model, dancer, and choreographer. She has acted in several films such as Twenty Nine (1969) and The Wild Geese (1978). Miller gained notoriety for being married to Formula 1 race driver James Hunt, and leaving him for Richard Burton in 1976.
Ian Yule was a British born South African actor and soldier. He had a film career that commenced in the late 1960s and lasted to around the early to mid 2000s. Many of the roles he has played are that of a soldier. The films he has appeared in include Killer Force, in 1976, One Way also released in 1976, Golden Rendezvous in 1977, The Wild Geese in 1978, —Safari 3000 in 1982, City of Blood in 1983, and many more. He was also a stuntman in a few films. He also was a screenwriter and wrote some screen plays including Shamwari in which he starred opposite Ken Gampu. He was a well known actor in South Africa.
Skeleton Coast is a 1987 South African made mercenary war film directed by John Cardos in the first of three films for producer Harry Alan Towers. It was the first of Towers' Breton Film Productions.
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