Review: Death Trench – “A solid addition to the horror-war genre”

Directed by Leo Scherman.
Starring Rossif Sutherland, Robert Stadlober, Charlie Carrick, Shaun Benson, Ted Atherton.

Mixing the horror genre with the war film is not a new, and even in recent years we’ve had examples such as Overlord and Outpost, and of course, anyone who reads the Hellboy comics will be familiar with mad Nazi scientists that dabble in the dark magics. Death Trench (aka Trench 11) takes a slightly different tack, being set in the final days of the First World War rather than the second. Canadian Lieutenant Berton (Sutherland), is a miner, a tunneller, a sapper who has spent the war not in the trenches but under them, the old Medieval tactic of undermining a fortified position has come back in this static war of attrition.

After a terrifying cave-in which he barely survived, he’s enjoying some well-deserved R&R and spending time with his French girlfriend. He is none too happy when some military police come looking for him to drag him back in for another mission. Allied intelligence has gotten wind of a secret German underground complex – not bunkers amid the main lines, but miles behind the front lines. As the German lines are starting to crumble and they know it has been hastily abandoned – it isn’t a fortification, they think it is a secret chemical weapons lab. They know one of those involved is a ruthless German scientist who has been one of those developing new strains of previous chemical weapons. With the chaos of retreat there is a chance to investigate and find out what they were doing in this underground lair, and Berton’s tunneller skills are required, along with the intelligence agents and a small escort group of American Doughboys, who are none to happy with being assigned to this mission when they all know the war is coming to an end.

What they find is a secret research bunker, a complex of claustrophobic tunnels and rooms, which should have been destroyed when abandoned, but the demolition charges failed to blow. As the small team, already at loggerheads with one another, descend into the world below they don’t know that Herr Doctor Reiner (Stadlober) is leading a German team back to salvage experimental materials then destroy the complex before the Allies find it. And that’s the least of their problems – German soldiers they are used to dealing with, but some of the test subjects of those secret experiments by Reiner are still down there in the dark, waiting…

The set-up here is fairly simple: two groups of enemy soldiers that will come into contact with one another, but find there is something far, far worse, something that doesn’t care what uniform you are wearing. It may not be the most original plot, but it carries along quite well. The small budget actually works for them in having those small, closed, underground sets, which are budget-effective but also pretty damned good for generating that enclosed, trapped sense of mounting claustrophobia, even before the Bad Things start to appear, and the effects for the experimental subjects is also well-handled. Sutherland’s war-weary tunneller and Stadlober’s ruthless scientist are the stand-outs here, and they get much of the screen time (I had the feeling Stadlober was relishing playing the seemingly urbane, civilised scientist who is actually totally amoral and determined to finish his work). It’s also interesting to see World War One used instead of the more common Second World War – while not mind-blowing this is still a decently solid addition to the horror-war genre.

Death Trench is released on DVD and Digital Download from May 6th.