The Steel Helmet
1951 Directed by Samuel Fuller
Synopsis
It's the REAL Korean Story!
A ragtag group of American stragglers battles against superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War.
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Combat isn’t a poetic ballad but a blow to the head, says Samuel Fuller; his riposte to Milestone’s "A Walk in the Sun" opens with the audience already besieged by artillery shells. The body-strewn aftermath of an ambush introduces the mauled terrain of the Korean War, the bestial sergeant (Gene Evans) stomps through it like bundled dynamite wrapped in a beard, a deranged guide for a deranged conflict. He’s joined by a munchkin dubbed Short Round (William Chun) and an Army medic (James Edwards), then runs into a lost American patrol surrounded by Red snipers. Among the dogfaces is a fellow World War II survivor (Richard Loo), a conscientious objector (Robert Hutton) lugging a mini-church organ, a radio operator (Richard…
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"If you die, I'll kill ya!". Fuller's supremely low-budget, shot in 10 days (though you wouldn't pick either) effort is a great war movie, of a genre I'm generally not too hot on. The eclectic group stuck together inside a Buddhist temple all bring complex and problematic ideas to the usually black-and-white world of Hollywood war, like the black medic, fighting for a country that discriminates him with Jim Crow laws in peace time. The performances are all solid and the action sequences well directed. A tight 85 minutes means there is little in the way of filler or dull moment, a real American war classic.
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As always with Fuller, more textured, more intense, and more progressive than you initially expect. He uses the Korean War to introduce themes and tone that later Vietnam War pictures will attempt to replicate, but they won't do it as well. "There is no end to this story."
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This war film from Fuller is better than his latter attempt with The Big Red One mostly because it is shorter in length because both are still similar in episodic story telling and style. What also benefits this one from the latter is a more realistic and serious approach to the matter at hand, killing and surviving during war. Also in this film, there are not very many settings and where the characters are normally (the jungle, the rice fields or the temple) all has a sense of claustrophobia and the camera is always close to the group making the viewer one of the soldiers. This enhances the suspense and tension as we are unsure of what danger lurks ahead…
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Like a knife to the back,
A bullet to the head.
Buddha observes. -
"There is no end to this story"
That ending caption alone (though helped by the entire movie of course) makes The Steel Helmet not only the most honest American war film ever, but also one of the best.
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As always with Fuller, more textured, more intense, and more progressive than you initially expect. He uses the Korean War to introduce themes and tone that later Vietnam War pictures will attempt to replicate, but they won't do it as well. "There is no end to this story."
-
Combat isn’t a poetic ballad but a blow to the head, says Samuel Fuller; his riposte to Milestone’s "A Walk in the Sun" opens with the audience already besieged by artillery shells. The body-strewn aftermath of an ambush introduces the mauled terrain of the Korean War, the bestial sergeant (Gene Evans) stomps through it like bundled dynamite wrapped in a beard, a deranged guide for a deranged conflict. He’s joined by a munchkin dubbed Short Round (William Chun) and an Army medic (James Edwards), then runs into a lost American patrol surrounded by Red snipers. Among the dogfaces is a fellow World War II survivor (Richard Loo), a conscientious objector (Robert Hutton) lugging a mini-church organ, a radio operator (Richard…
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Solid war pic by fuller. I liked Evans as Sgt. Zack.
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A captivating and gritty film about soldiers in the Korean War as they seek shelter in a temple as they deal with the realities of war as well as the many moral and racial issues that surrounds them.
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"If you die, I'll kill ya!". Fuller's supremely low-budget, shot in 10 days (though you wouldn't pick either) effort is a great war movie, of a genre I'm generally not too hot on. The eclectic group stuck together inside a Buddhist temple all bring complex and problematic ideas to the usually black-and-white world of Hollywood war, like the black medic, fighting for a country that discriminates him with Jim Crow laws in peace time. The performances are all solid and the action sequences well directed. A tight 85 minutes means there is little in the way of filler or dull moment, a real American war classic.
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Raw for '51, but also overplotted and roundly cinematic, it never veers into an assaulting realism or a philosophic haze - though it has elements of both. Gene Evans is exceptional, giving what just barely amounts to an osmotic performance, trudging about as the skillfully hardended soldier in a perpetual state of stark, cynical gruffness. His relationship with William Chun's Short Round is one of the most complex and emotionally abundant of the Fuller canon imo.
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This war film from Fuller is better than his latter attempt with The Big Red One mostly because it is shorter in length because both are still similar in episodic story telling and style. What also benefits this one from the latter is a more realistic and serious approach to the matter at hand, killing and surviving during war. Also in this film, there are not very many settings and where the characters are normally (the jungle, the rice fields or the temple) all has a sense of claustrophobia and the camera is always close to the group making the viewer one of the soldiers. This enhances the suspense and tension as we are unsure of what danger lurks ahead…