“War Blade” is a rather dull, half-speed WWII commando picture about two Brits and some French resisters trying to storm a Nazi bunker where strange and nefarious things are going on, and not just to the prisoners they’re torturing there.

But C-movie writer-director Nicholas Winter (“Robin Hood: The Rebellion”) puts on another clinic on how to do a period piece on a paltry budget with this inactive action pic.

You don’t need to have Spielberg’s resources to shoot a World War II movie, even today. As long a you start out with more knowledge of the conflict and the genre than the folks who made “Battle for Saipan” did, and maybe have a better idea of what story to tell than the folks who made “Ghosts of War” did, it can be done.

Winter managed the former if not the latter.

Joseph Millson plays Banks, a commando given the job of checking out this bunker, which a Resistance fighter has risked his neck to have his German nurse (Alina Tamara) smuggle to his Resistance cell-leader wife (Rebecca Scott).

Banks is given “a liability, frankly” as his accomplice — a half-mad/mostly-deaf explosives expert (Paul Marlon, good) and orders to contact Ivy, the cell leader who “married a Frenchman” but whom he knew before the war.

The story the escaped German nurse — whose accent comes and goes — tells seems sketchy and far-fetched. But Banks has his orders.

“We need you to go there and make a nuisance of yourself.”

The fights are poorly-managed, stage punches arrive after the sound effect of fist smacking flesh in some cases. The shootouts (involving a DEAF guy) are clumsy.

But for all that and its funereal pacing, Winter manages a reasonably-convincing setting and realistic period look.

You don’t need to show a parachute drop, just its aftermath — commandos gathering their gear and confronted by partisans. You don’t need to show aircraft of the era. Sound effects will do. When a vintage reconaissance plane actually shows up in the finale, it feels like a treat for us and for Winter.

You only need one period-perfect command car. From the looks of things, they got the aged owner to drive it, as well (not necessarily inaccurate, as everybody wanted to “do their bit” in Keep Calm and Carry On-land.

A few WWII rifles and machine guns and a reasonable facsimile of Wehrmacht and SS uniforms will hide a world of shortcomings, although not the to commanding Nazi’s ’80s Anglo-pop bank haircut.

The third act is considerably more polished than the first, even throwing in a bloody twist or two.

But this won’t satisfy action fans or war movie buffs. “War Blade” is of value only to filmmakers with big ideas and no money, or to film schools where it might be shown as an example of what you can manage on a shoestring, a generic script and no one on set who can block, stage, shoot and edit a proper fight to the death.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Joseph Millson, Rebecca Scott, Alina Tamara, Timothy Blore and Paul Marlon

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nicholas Winter. A 101 Pictures release.

Running time: 1:31