Hell is for Heroes

Amy and Bruce and I have decided to have a movie night every Wednesday. The impetus for this was me unearthing the VHS tapes I left in storage when I went on the road. The other impetus is that Bruce needs to get his movie education (he's never seen the Magnificent Seven!!).

So we started off with Hell is for Heroes (1962), one of my favorite WW II movies. It's not a big splashy "war" movie with lots of tanks and battles and a cast of thousands. It's the story of a platoon left to man a gap on the front lines, a gap that should be assigned a regiment, not just a platoon. There's a German pillbox just across the valley, the valley with landmines. Taking out the pillbox and its guns becomes the objective.

We get to know the six guys left on the line: the hardcase who's been busted from master sergeant to private (Steve McQueen), the good soldier who knows his limitations (Harry Guardino), the gutsy scrounger (Bobby Darin), the placid romantic (Bill Mullikin), the mechanical genius (James Coburn), and the follower (Mike Kellin). Added to these are the Sergeant in charge of several platoons (Fess Parker) who had to leave these guys on their own, a Polish refugees who hates Nazis and who shows up on the line to help (Nick Adams), and the typist who loses his way and gets dragooned into service with the platoon (Bob Newhart).

A hermetic little movie that really makes you feel the immediacy of both camaraderie and death.

Turns out this is only McQueen's third movie; he'd done some TV (incl. Wanted Dead or Alive series) and a couple of cameos, but for full movie roles, this was the third (Magnificent Seven was the second). And Bobby Darin was a real surprise as he turned out to be a very good actor (see Captain Newman M.D. sometime). Bob Newhart was the comic relief and did well enough. The others were veteran character actors. I do love the way McQueen moves, yum yum.