Rounding out the Dollars trilogy. Only reservation I have with this one is the van Cleef/Wallach billing on the front; that's roughly where it was on the poster but it looks too far down, yet moving it up closer to Eastwood's name looks just as weird.
Based on Jack D. Hunter's tale of wartime spin and military corruption, The Blue Max is an odd beast mixing contemporary anti-war sentiment and cynicism with old-fashioned aerial thrills. The obsession with medals - in this case the titular German award - is an interesting foreshadowing of Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron, while on paper there's lots of potential to the had by the character and situation of Stachel, a self-interested climber who immediately meets his match in the exploitative political machinations of Count von Klugerman.
