GREY WOLF: THE ESCAPE OF ADOLF HITLER

ACHTUNG!! SPOILERS!!

Every so often in the newspapers, there will be a large attention grabbing article headed with an irresistible question - a phenomenon known as "Questions To Which The Answer Is No", because if you plough through all thirty paragraphs of speculation, nonsense and wild assumption you find that it invariably does conclude with a "no". Is this conclusive evidence of the Loch Ness Monster? Can pomegranates cure piles? Has this plumber from Droitwich found the secret of eternal youth? Was the Queen involved in the cancellation of Blake's Seven? Sift through all the evidence for a bit and you find the answer is "probably not".

Another wonderful example of a QTWTAIN would be "Did Adolf Hitler fake his suicide in the bunker by means of a look-alike cadaver, and then hide out in Argentina (the only other country in the world with an established Nazi party) with wife Eva and a previously unknown daughter, planning a triumphant resurrection of the Third Reich with Martin Borman, until he died alone and ignored in a Patagonian hospital in 1962?" Well, again, probably not. Incredibly, that is precisely the thrust of Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler, a film I assumed to be an entirely fictional pseudo-documentary, until I looked it up online afterwards and discovered that the book on which it is based is classified as historical non fiction by a proper serious historian and a proper serious journalist.

Downfall 2 this isn't. But it's perfectly alright and watchable enough: a series of period reconstructions with voiceover testimony, and if you didn't believe this was a QTWTAIN  then you might even find it a persuasively told story that might just be true....oh, surely not? Surely there has to be something wrong if you cannot actually tell whether it's a straight faced spoof or the genuine article. Don't forget, a lot of people thought Spinal Tap was a real band. But no, this is a proper documentary: which means you have to take its thesis seriously. Suddenly I've no idea what to think. The BBFC gave the film a PG certificate but the DVD carries a 15 (probably for the extra material, trailers etc).

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