Hell's Horizon

This is not just a B-feature with second rate actors making the best of a dreary story about bombing in bad weather and meeting with disaster, but actually a very interesting drama with many significant ingredients. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is the music, as this film introduced Chet Baker, and he plays the trumpet quite a lot in the beginning. John Ireland makes a good job as the "true grit" captain, and all the other actors are excellent as well. This group of fliers are stationed on Okinawa in 1952 and having a dull time, when they get the assignment of bombing a strategic bridge in North Korea, because this is the Korea war. The mission is carried out with looming complications and some unnecessary risk-taking, and there are casualties. So there is a significant tragic element as well. But it's a first class drama, although generally brushed aside and neglected as second rate, but it will hold a position on par with the two John Wayne aircraft disaster films some years earler, but it's Chet Baker and that trumpeter that you will remember.

A. flight crew goes on an unescorted bombing run on the bridges over the Yalu River during the Korean War.

It's an interesting cast, with John Ireland, William Schallert, Hugh Beaumont, and Bill Williams in the crew. One of the problems with it is that it fits neatly into the World War Two Flyer Squadrom genre of the period. Change a few lines of dialogue, and convert Marla English from an Okinawan to a Scottish lassie, and you have a decent movie of the previous war. Since most of it is shot on a stage decorated like a bomber's cockpit, it's clearly a very cheap feature, with little to recommend it.

This time it is the poster that is a bit misleading - it suggests a sultriness that is completely lacking from this documentary style tale of an American bombing crew during the Korean War. John Ireland leads the cast as the rather obnoxious "Capt. Merrill" tasked with a mission to destroy a crucial bridge over a river. The film depicts their efforts and their more perilous and suspenseful return journey with fuel gushing from an hole in the wing. Marla English ("Sami") provides what little glamour this dryly produced wartime drama allows, and though it does feature some interesting actuality footage, this film is all a bit on the flat side with little to distinguish it.

About the best use of stock footage I've seen. Make no mistake, there are ZERO shots of aircraft flying, taking off, even exteriors on the ramp that are shot for this movie, or even models. It's all tent city on a soundstage, interior of a (probably real but scrapped surplus) B29, and stock footage.

But it sorta works. They voice over things like the crew checking out the plane as the stock footage isn't that great resolution, it's mid shots, and one 50s USAF guy in all his gear looks very much like another.

Falls apart a bit in the action scenes where the footage cannot decide what altitude they are at (and it is scripted, sorta matters), the enemy aircraft are several /different/ USAF aircraft, and... oh, they bomb China. That also was briefed, but they forget when picking impact footage.

Well acted, pretty well scripted. Okay photography, and the in-aircraft scenes are awfully well done; the pilot ones are the only with pretty soundstage blocking, others feel very personal. Apparently had a good advisor, everyone does stuff that at least feels very authentic, everything deliberate.

Yes, the Korean love interest is super duper a white chick, and it's not just racist but is distractingly wrong.

Otherwise the worst thing about the film is the editing. It's just indifferent. Many shots too long, some too short and it cuts between unimportant things. The stock footage also falls prey to this; it could have used 90% less of it, and done almost everything from inside the aircraft, not just as a character study but as claustrophobic action. Those were already the best bits.

I am not the most politically correct person out there, but sometimes you certainly can understand folks being upset at a film. Take "Hell's Horizon", a movie set in the Korean War. The female lead (Marla English) is supposed to be Korean....but she seems about as Korean as a Taco Bell! She's obviously a Caucasian and they made no attempt to get her to look or sound Asian. The same can be said about some of the other 'Koreans'...folks who, in some cases, have painted kin and black wigs! The result of which is just stupid....as well as offensive...but mostly stupid.

So is the movie worth seeing despite all this foolishness? Not especially. The first portion of the film is particularly hard to get past....as the 'soldiers' seemed about as professional as the Three Stooges and it was hard to believe these were America's finest! Terrible writing is the problem with all this. And, sadly, the stupid dialog simply continues until this dopey film reaches the end. The folks who fought in this war deserved better than this drivel.