Hogan enlists an attractive agent's help in blackmailing Gen. Burkhalter so Klink won't be punished for the destruction of a newly built radio tower.Hogan enlists an attractive agent's help in blackmailing Gen. Burkhalter so Klink won't be punished for the destruction of a newly built radio tower.Hogan enlists an attractive agent's help in blackmailing Gen. Burkhalter so Klink won't be punished for the destruction of a newly built radio tower.
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- TriviaThe shot of the top of the tower being destroyed is newsreel footage of the destruction of an actual defunct radio tower in California.
- GoofsWhen Carter pushes the plunger to blow up the base of the tower, the base can be seen having four legs. The shots of the tower that falls down show a three-sided tower. Also, Carter blows the base of the tower first, then the top. If the base were blown first, the tower would be falling when the top was blown. The tower was was seen to be still upright when the top was blown.
Featured review
Lazy Laurence Calls It In
In the argument over what is the world's oldest profession, spying often tangles with prostitution, and for good reason: The honeytrap is a time-honored tool of tradecraft, an attractive woman who can seduce or compromise a man (if those aren't one and the same) in the name of God and country. In "The Tower," Colonel Hogan calls on an underground contact, Lili (Elisa Ingram), to perform such a service to enable the Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit operating covertly from German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 13, to carry out the sabotage part this time out.
Smoothly scripted by Laurence Marks, "The Tower" indeed plays like another one of his taut capers driven by a plausible premise: The Germans have built a radio tower near Stalag 13 as part of an early-warning communications network to alert German fighters sooner to the approach of Allied bombers; scrambling them earlier increases the odds of shooting down more bombers and saving more targets from destruction. Knocking out the tower seems necessary, right?
Right. Only . . . As "Hogan's Heroes" neared the end of its second season, its formula approach, endemic to situation comedies, particularly those from the 1960s, made crafting variations on the theme a challenge. Here, we have the target that must be destroyed, only the Germans know that by placing it near a POW camp the Allies won't bomb it for fear of killing their own personnel, so it falls to the Heroes to do the figurative wetwork on it. General Burkhalter makes Stalag 13 commandant Colonel Klink responsible for the tower's security--under threat of a transfer to the Russian Front should he fail. Knowing this, Hogan must find a way to compromise Burkhalter so he won't punish Klink after the operation, otherwise he might get a new commandant who is, you know, competent and thus possibly shut down their mission.
Enter Lili, who had first led the Heroes to the tower and now takes umbrage at Hogan's idea of sending a secret-admirer mash note to Klink, whom Hogan gets to invite Lili to camp for dinner while also inviting Burkhalter, who Hogan knows will move in on Lili. Rank has its privileges, don't you know?
If you don't recognize some of these tropes, you will, because they will crop up again and again. C'est la guerre. That's not to say that the dinner party is not the highlight of "The Tower," with Ingram in the spotlight as the honeytrap sticking to Burkhalter--to Klink's chagrin--while Sergeant Kinchloe, lurking in the darkness outside the window, takes one compromising photo of the cozy couple after another to blackmail the married general as director Gene Reynolds frames and paces the scene to maximum seriocomic effect, abetted by supervising editor Jerry London.
And like a good soldier, Marks writes to spec. Only there's no spark, just professional competence in trotting out the tropes. For "The Tower," lazy Laurence calls it in.
Smoothly scripted by Laurence Marks, "The Tower" indeed plays like another one of his taut capers driven by a plausible premise: The Germans have built a radio tower near Stalag 13 as part of an early-warning communications network to alert German fighters sooner to the approach of Allied bombers; scrambling them earlier increases the odds of shooting down more bombers and saving more targets from destruction. Knocking out the tower seems necessary, right?
Right. Only . . . As "Hogan's Heroes" neared the end of its second season, its formula approach, endemic to situation comedies, particularly those from the 1960s, made crafting variations on the theme a challenge. Here, we have the target that must be destroyed, only the Germans know that by placing it near a POW camp the Allies won't bomb it for fear of killing their own personnel, so it falls to the Heroes to do the figurative wetwork on it. General Burkhalter makes Stalag 13 commandant Colonel Klink responsible for the tower's security--under threat of a transfer to the Russian Front should he fail. Knowing this, Hogan must find a way to compromise Burkhalter so he won't punish Klink after the operation, otherwise he might get a new commandant who is, you know, competent and thus possibly shut down their mission.
Enter Lili, who had first led the Heroes to the tower and now takes umbrage at Hogan's idea of sending a secret-admirer mash note to Klink, whom Hogan gets to invite Lili to camp for dinner while also inviting Burkhalter, who Hogan knows will move in on Lili. Rank has its privileges, don't you know?
If you don't recognize some of these tropes, you will, because they will crop up again and again. C'est la guerre. That's not to say that the dinner party is not the highlight of "The Tower," with Ingram in the spotlight as the honeytrap sticking to Burkhalter--to Klink's chagrin--while Sergeant Kinchloe, lurking in the darkness outside the window, takes one compromising photo of the cozy couple after another to blackmail the married general as director Gene Reynolds frames and paces the scene to maximum seriocomic effect, abetted by supervising editor Jerry London.
And like a good soldier, Marks writes to spec. Only there's no spark, just professional competence in trotting out the tropes. For "The Tower," lazy Laurence calls it in.
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- darryl-tahirali
- Apr 1, 2022
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