The Steel Helmet

While maybe not the greatest of all war pictures, STEEL HELMET is the first film I remember seeing on TV as a kid! I don't know what year, or how old I was, but we didn't yet have a TV set, we were visiting a relative's house, who had one, and as the adults were in the main room playing cards and drinking, I lay on the sofa (still captivated by this new invention, imagine: Movies right in your house!,) watched Steel Helmet all the way through! Normally, as little kid, I would've fallen asleep, but for some strange reason, this film mesmerized me and captured my attention so well, I remembered it all through the years, and it became available on VHS, I snatched up a copy right away! Still Have it, and I'm looking to find a DVD version as well! Wow! What a memory! This would have been about '52 or '53 or '54!

In the Korean War, the prisoner of war Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans) and only survivor of his company is released by the South-Korean boy Short Round (William Chun). The walk together trying to reach the American lines, and they stumble with other survivors, forming a ragtag platoon.

When they reach a Buddhist temple, they learn that it is abandoned and they camp there, transforming it in an observation outpost. When they realize that they are under siege of the communist army, they have to battle to survive.

"The Steel Helmet" is a simple, scathing and extremely realistic film by Samuel Fuller. The behavior of the soldiers and the battle scenes battle scenes are extremely realistic. But the stronger part is the sharp critic to the racism in America, through the dialog of the North Korean POW and the Afro-American soldier first and the Asian descendant soldier later. As an effect of the McCarthyism, Samuel Fuller had problems with the FBI because of these scenes. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Capacete de Aço" ("Steel Helmet")

This movie feels a little dated but still powerful. Very evolved for a war movie of its time. Characters seem very real: the movie avoids stereotypes typical to war pictures. I thought the supporting characters were the strongest part of the movie. Manages to operate almost entirely independently of plot, focussing on character and situation instead. The very first scene is particularly arresting, and the abrupt beginning and partial ending are very effective at making the film feel real.

I grew up with this movie, which was shown regularly on local television stations at a time when post-1949 films were scarce as hen's teeth on the tube. The film that put writer-director Samuel Fuller on the map, to the extent that he was ever there, it looks less impressive now, but I have a soft spot for it. It is the story of a group of infantrymen, many of them social misfits, during the Korean War, and their heroic efforts in defense of a Buddhist temple during a Communist-led attack. The major character in the film is Sgt. Zack, played to the hilt by a cigar-chewing Gene Evans, who never became a star but whose performance here is powerful and charismatic, flawless in every detail. I've never seen him in anything else where he's half as good as he is here. Evans carries the film like a super-star, and in Steel Helmet, for a short time, he is one. The others are good, too. Steve Brodie is less of a jerk than usual; James Edwards is very sharp, more assertive than in the previous year's Home Of the Brave, which he made with Brodie. As to the film itself, its qualities come from being a sort of tabloid journalist's work of art. It is weakest when preachy about race relations, strongest when men are arguing, shouting and competing with one another as if they had just stepped out of the pages one of those 'adult' comic books they used to have in barbershops. The movie's cheapness gives it a documentary look, and for once GI's in a film look dirty and unshaven. The scenes with the giant Buddha that dominates he temple's interior have an otherworldliness about them that seems serendipitous, not planned, and give the quieter scenes a background of serenity without which the picture might be intolerably violent and bitter.

Samuel Fuller was a film maker who lived up to the word " auteur " . He started off in Hollywood in the mid 1930s by writing original screenplays of his own and doctoring/polishing other peoples screenplays . Already established in Hollywood when America entered the second world war in 1941 Fuller enlisted in the infantry , a rather noble effort on his part all things considered and saw front line action where he was decorated for bravery . This experience served Fuller well and he's best known for the war films he directed . You could claim that nearly all his movies were nothing more than second feature B movies and while there's a lot of truth to this his skills ensured that his films seemed much more than mere B movies . Ironically enough his one big studio picture THE BIG RED ONE is one of his weakest

THE STEEL HELMET is the film that established Fuller as a director . It was the first film produced on the Korean war . One thing that is problematic about the Koran war is trying to make a film that is unique to that conflict and one that couldn't have easily have taken place in the second world war . The British film A HILL IN Korea ( A film that gave Michael Caine his screen debut ) suffered from this but THE STEEL HELMET doesn't . Despite the later debacle of Vietnam one thing military historians universally agree upon is that the worst military performance of the 20th Century of the American military was the early stages of the Korean War that saw the longest military retreat of American forces which happened on the Korean peninsula in the Summer of 1950 . This film tells of that retreat

One criticism about war films of any era is that they're jingoistic flag wavers where Uncle Sam kills lots of enemy soldiers with hardly a single American suffering a scratch . Not so in THE STEEL HELMET where the film starts of in a down beat way with a lone American survivor waking up surrounded by the bodies of his dead comrades and finding that things might just be about to get worse and the story develops in the same gloomy manner and makes the cogent point that in this conflict not all the combatants wear a uniform . It also makes a point about the absurdity of war with little touches that while it's okay to drop bombs and kill people Holy shrines are untouchable . It also shows American servicemen in a rather unheroic light and considering this was produced when America was fighting a war with a very uncertain outcome this alone elevated THE STEEL HELMET to mini-masterpiece status