Merrill's Marauders

This movie was definitely worth watching. I met Jeff Chandler when he came into the the photography shop where military could develop their own photos. He was quite a man. Very tall, with piercing eyes and that silver hair... Sad that he died in such a fashion.

I was in the Air Force in the Philippines when this was made and I actually was in the movie as an impromptu stunt man :) They paid me $35 because I fell off of a horse in the race scene :) Watching other scenes being shot was quite humorous at times when men would be shot and fall and then, not wanting to be out of the scene I imagine, would get up and get back in the fight :))) The editors did a great job with what they had ...

Just watch the film, it is really well worth it!

General Stitwel (John Hoyt) assigns a dangerous mission to commander Merril (Jeff Chandler) and his 3000 USA Marines volunteers . As the tough officer commands a two-fisted regiment fighting in the jungles of Burma. In 1944 the exhausted unit achieves their latest aim and expects to be relieved . However , Merril has to lead his band throughout the Burmese jungles to his definitive mission in Japonese zone , beyond the enemy lines , at Mykyana . At the end of the movie there is a parade review that features the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Action , adventure , war movie by the great Samuel Fuller in which Chandler leads a group of soldiers through the Burmese jungle and battling feared Japonese . Support cast is pretty good , such as : Ty Hardin , Claude Akins , Peter Brown , Andrew Duggan , John Hoyt and Will Hutchins . At the beginning , the film being produced by Warner Bros and hired Gary Cooper . However , Cooper died by cancer and then it was totally financed by screenwriter and producer Milton Sperling in a lower budget . Nicely played by Jeff Chandler , an ebullient actor who died by stroke before the movie was released . Colorful cinematography by William H. Clothier , John Ford regular . Well photographed in Warnerscope and Technicolor and shot on location in the Philippines Islands . Furthermore , a thrilling and moving score by Howard Jackson .

The motion picture was well directed and co-scripted by Samuel Fuller for three months . Fuller has become something of a cult favorite , an essential and fundamental figure in the film world . Here Fuller excels at showing the mayhem and confusion of battles , giving spectacular frames as when it takes place a desperate pitched fighting at an enemy installation , as a railhead and other overwhelming bloody events . The cigar-chewing Fuller directed several classic movies , such as : ¨The naked Kiss¨ , ¨Pickup on South Street¨ , ¨Underworld USA¨ , ¨shock corridor¨ , ¨Hell and high water¨ , ¨Fixed bayonets¨ , ¨White dog¨ and ¨The big Red one¨.

Just as Clark Gable died from the strain of doing those roping scenes with wild horses in The Misfits, Jeff Chandler died because of the work required in the Phillipines location for Merrill's Marauders. What a terrible tragedy and a terrible waste at the same time.

The story of Jeff Chandler's death could almost be the subject of a black comedy. He was injured while participating in a pick up baseball game among the cast and crew. According to Marilyn Kirk's biography of him, while playing first base he stretched for a throw to his position and pulled his back out.

With about six weeks of shooting left and not wanting to either run up the cost while on hiatus or having the film shelved altogether, Chandler continued in pain as his back got worse and worse. When the film wrapped he went for a needed operation and that was botched.

Chandler had just finally got free of his Universal contract and had signed a multi-picture deal with Warner Brothers of which Merrill's Marauders was to be the first. It was an important film to him. Maybe under other circumstances, he might have tended to health issues first.

Too bad he didn't live to see it because as Brigadier General Frank Merrill he gives one of his best screen performances. In fact in a crazy way the pain he was enduring in real life probably helped his performance because Chandler in the film is supposed to be under a physical and mental strain.

Merrill's Marauders was a picked group of GIs from the Pacific Theater who were on a volunteer mission to be a part of the retaking of Burma. The bulk of the fighting done in the China-Burma-India Theater was done by British and Commonwealth forces. The Commander of the Theater was Lord Louis Mountbatten, but the military genius over all was a very unsung British hero named General William Slim. Joseph Stilwell, the American General in China, is played here by John Hoyt. Stilwell may have been Merrill's commander, but Slim was running the show.

Warner Brothers provided a trio of their TV cowboys, Ty Hardin, Peter Brown and Will Hutchins in support of Chandler. And he got good support from Claude Akins and Andrew Duggan as well.

Merrill's Marauders is a fine film, but I'm not sure it was worth Jeff Chandler's life.

This was a decent World War II movie, but not as exciting as I had hoped it would be. I liked the fact it was exactly that - a war story - with no sappy romance distractions - but yet it was still on the bland side. I can't quite put my finger on it, but some spark was missing. If this was re-made today, I'm sure it would have been more of an attention-grabber.

Perhaps part of the minor problem is that the story is a bit of a downer most of the way through (not that war is ever uplifting). It's basically about a group of soldiers who volunteered for this bad assignment (to fight in Burma) and when their assignment was over and they assumed they were going home, they were given further assignments. Battling unrelenting fatigue and extremely difficult terrain means there are very few upbeat moments in this film. In this based-on-a-true story movie, only about 100 soldiers were left fighting after 3,000 started. Yet a lot of the movie just shows the poor guys sloshing through swamps or slowing trying to make their way up treacherous mountain terrain.

You get a few minor attempts at some humor to break up the depressing story, but they are weak such as the stereotypical southerner with his pet mule who wears a straw hat.

In some respects, this film reminded me of "The Big Red One," which also was directed by Sam Fuller but had a lot more intensity and passion to it.

Jeff Chandler and Ty Hardin were fine in the lead roles, as was Claude Atkins in a supporting one. Chandler and Atkins looked like tough, battle-scarred soldiers more than the others. Hardin has too much pretty-boy looks and voice for this role, although his acting was fine.

Overall, okay, but not worth a second look.

Though a war movie, "Merrill's Marauders" makes its deepest impressions in the scenes between the battles.

As a unit of exhausted American soldiers claw their way along a rocky slope, one falls to a screaming death. The others pause a moment to watch, then resume climbing.

At one village, a boy gives a crusty sergeant played by Claude Akins a bowl of rice. The sergeant tries to smile, only to break down instead.

"When you lead, you have to hurt people," General Merrill (Jeff Chandler) tells his prize officer "Stock" (Ty Hardin). "The enemy, and sometimes your own."

Sam Fuller was a war vet as well as a director. In making his war films, he struggled to keep it real while at the same time delivering popular entertainment. "Merrill's Marauders" leans too much in the latter direction, with hokey battle scenes and gung-ho narration. But Chandler and Hardin provide sympathetic rooting interests. The cinematography by William Clothier captures riverine landscapes in all their harsh and wild beauty.

The real story of the 5307th Composite Unit and its role in retaking Burma provides a solid backdrop for Fuller's cold view of war and its human toll. Of the 3,000 troops that started out, only 100 remained standing at the end, typhus and Japanese taking equal measure of the rest. Merrill's decision to press forward ("If they've got a single ounce of strength left, they can fight!") is portrayed as a cruel necessity, this much softened from the real GI take on Merrill's boss, Vinegar Joe Stilwell. Stilwell was roundly hated by the Marauders for pushing his boys too hard.

This is something we don't see here. Cooperation with the U.S. military required some futzing on Fuller's part, which he did in hopes of following it with a pet project regarding his own World War II experience that would only emerge 18 years later: "The Big Red One".

The battle scenes feel forced and phony. Fuller himself would complain nobody dies in war as neatly as in movies, and you see that a lot here. A perversely favorite moment for me is when a soldier named "Bullseye" shoots a Japanese soldier off of a watchtower. The soldier starts to fall, then pauses, grabs a baluster, and performs a neat tuck-and-roll in the direction of an offscreen mat.

The one battle scene that works, even with the inane fanfare scoring that is this film's single worst element, is a fight through a maze-like warren of train-support blocks at the railhead town of Shaduzup. Japanese and American soldiers appear and fall in random, endless waves. I don't think soldiers in World War II really called each other "knothead", but moments like those at Shaduzup really connect and help to pull this film over the finish line - however raggedly.

Though probably a bit too rah-rah for Fuller's fans, "Merrill's Marauders" packs a punch and some moments of affecting surprise.