The Steel Helmet

One of the earliest films to deal with the Korean War, Steel Helmet has good action (on a limited budget, which shows in the largest battle scene), well-drawn characters, and visits more than one contemporaneous issue, including racism and manipulation of that issue by the Soviets and their satellites during the Cold War.

I saw the film originally in its year of release and was riveted to the screen. For me, the best element of the film is Gene Evans' portrayal of Sgt. Zack, a hard boiled, but not cast-iron career soldier. I've not seen anything of Gene's to rival this portrayal.

Viewed as a document both for, and yet a little ahead of its time, Steel Helmet is a great lower budget contribution to the film literature of the Korean War.

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

Steel Helmet, The (1951)

*** (out of 4)

Fuller's grim Korean War drama follows Sgt. Zack (Gene Evans) and other rugged men as they take shelter in an abandoned Buddhist temple where they have time to reflect on what they're going in the war. Filmed in a reported ten days, this is one of those rare films that takes place during the war which it is showing. The movie doesn't really take a stance on either side of the line, although there's no question that Fuller wants to get his own ideas across. One of the best scenes involves a black man who is asked how he feels about having to fix these men up yet in the real world he wouldn't be able to sit at the same table with them. There's a lot of racial slurs thrown around at various people but this comes off very realistic as does the rest of the dialogue. You can listen to these men and actually feel like you're in the trenches with them as you'd be hearing this type of conversations. Another big plus is that the movie never paints a pretty picture, which was the type of thing we were use to seeing in war pictures from Hollywood. It's clear Fuller is doing things his way and he didn't care about criticism, which eventually came to the film. Evans delivers a fine and realistic performance as does the rest of the cast. The one negative thing was all the stock footage used at the end but the low budget probably required it. This isn't your typical war film but you can watch it and feel as if you're seeing an original. The influence on movies like FULL METAL JACKET, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and Tarantino's recent are pretty obvious.

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!