The opening credits roll on a U.S. Army steel helmet. There is a bullet hole on the left side. At last, it moves. The wearer peers out, then starts to inch his way up the steep grassy hill, past the bodies of other soldiers, holes in all their helmets. He moves on his side because his hands are tied behind him. He freezes at the approach of a barefoot boy with a gun, who listens to his heart, flips him over, cuts his bonds and pulls him to a sitting position. The sergeant rapidly takes a pill and water and uses sulfa powder on the wound to his left knee. The boy gets more sulfa from one of the dead men.
The boy compliments him on his hard head, Removing the helmet and revealing a gouge on his scalp, Zack explains that the bullet went around the inside of his helmet and came out.
He is the only survivor of his unit, which was massacred in cold blood after surrendering to the enemy. Zack repays the South Korean youth by calling him a gook. An orphan, the child insists on following him, explaining: Buddha says that he who saves a man's life holds his heart in his hands. Zack tells him to get lost, but soon relents, dubbing him "Short Round", and telling him to get a helmet, a gun and a pair of boots from the dead.
They come across Corporal Thompson, a black 19th Infantry medic, also the sole survivor of his platoon. They encounter a patrol led by inexperienced 90-day wonder Lieutenant Driscoll, whose men say that Thompson is a "straggler" who intentionally separated himself from his platoon. The North Koreans only kept him alive to treat their wounded.
When the men are pinned down by a pair of snipers, Zack and Sergeant Tanaka kill the marksmen. Zack reluctantly agrees to guide the unit to a Buddhist temple, where it is supposed to establish an observation post. Over Zack's objections, Lt. Driscoll orders a GI to collect the dog tags of a dead man. The soldier is blown to bits by a booby trap rigged to the body.
The men reach the apparently deserted temple without further incident, but that night a North Korean major hiding there kills a sentry. The major tries without success to subvert first Thompson, then Tanaka, by pointing out the racism they face in the United States and among their supposed comrades. Sergeant Zack, whose unit's last assignment was to bring back a prisoner for questioning, prepares to take the prisoner in, looking forward to a furlough as a reward. Before they leave, Lt. Driscoll asks to exchange helmets for luck, but Zack refuses out of a lack of respect for the lieutenant.
Later on, to Zack's horror, the boy is killed by a Korean marksman. When the Korean major mocks the prayer to Buddha the boy wrote Zack, Zack loses control and wounds him. Driscoll upbraids Zack for failing to remain professional, and Zack demands that Thompson save the man's life so that he can be interrogated at headquarters.
The unit spots a heavy concentration of North Koreans approaching and calls down an artillery strike. When the enemy realize the barrage is being directed from the temple, they mount an attack, led by a tank. The GI's repel the attack, even the soldier Zack had mocked relentlessly for having been a conscientious objector in World War II. Because of a change in heart, the man enlisted to fight in Korea, postponing his plans to study for the priesthood. He died riddling the enemy with a .50 caliber machine gun. Only Zack, Tanaka, Thompson, and radio operator survive. Zack suffers a flashback, imagining he is back on the beach during the D-Day landings in WWII, searching for his Colonel.
Some time later, with the battle over, a US Army infantry unit relieves the beleaguered men. As he leaves the temple, Zack goes to Lt. Driscoll's grave, swaps their helmets, and trudges on.
The men walk away from the camera, through an archway. The words “There is no end to this story.” appear on screen.
In October 1950, Fuller made his film in ten days with twenty-five extras who were UCLA students and a plywood tank, in a studio using mist, and exteriors shot in Griffith Park[4] for $104,000.[2][5]
The Steel Helmet confronts American racism when a North Korean Communist prisoner baits a black soldier over the inequalities he suffers both in the service and on the home front. He is rudely rebuffed by the character. The Korean soldier also makes the first-ever mention in a Hollywood film of the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. The film infuriated the military, which had provided assistance in the form of military stock footage.[citation needed] Army personnel summoned Fuller for a conference on the film,[6] upset over Zack's shooting of a prisoner of war. Fuller replied that in his World War II service it frequently happened, and had his former commanding officer, Brigadier General George A. Taylor, telephone the Pentagon to confirm it.[6] According to Fuller, the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker stated that The Steel Helmet "shows what beasts American soldiers are" while calling the director a reactionary for making said beast the hero of the film.[7]
Fuller cast Gene Evans, refusing a major studio's interest in filming The Steel Helmet with John Wayne as Sergeant Zack. Fuller threatened to quit when the producers wanted Evans replaced by Larry Parks.[6]Mickey Knox claimed to have been Fuller's first choice for Zack, but he turned the film down.[8]
Reception
The Steel Helmet was met with critical acclaim with much praise going to Fuller's directing.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times opened his review by stating, "For an obviously low-budget picture that was shot in a phenomenally short time, Samuel Fuller's metallic The Steel Helmet has some surprisingly good points." Crowther praised Fuller for having "sidestepped the romantic war clichés" and making a good effort to "create something like the reported climate" of the Korean War, but did fault the staging and sets as "patently artificial."[9]
A reviewer for Variety magazine wrote of the film, "The Steel Helmet pinpoints the Korean fighting in a grim, hardhitting tale that is excellently told", and went on to say that it also "serves to introduce Gene Evans as the sergeant, a vet of World War II, a tough man who is interested in staying alive, and hardened to the impact of warfare. Robert Hutton, conscientious objector in the last war but now willing to fight against communism; Steve Brodie, the lieutenant who used pull to stay out of combat previously; James Edwards, the Negro medic, and Richard Loo, a heroic Nisei, are the other principals who add to the rugged realism."[10]
Harrison's Reports wrote that the film was "destined to take its place among the best war pictures ever produced. It has been directed by Samuel Fuller so skillfully that the spectator's attention is held in a vise from the beginning to the end."[11]
John McCarten of The New Yorker was less enthusiastic about the film than most other critics, deeming it "no better and no worse than the usual Hollywood treatment of such matters."[12]The Monthly Film Bulletin in the UK was also dismissive, calling it "inevitably a rough job. Much of the film bears evidence of having been shot in the studio, and the jungle sequences in particular fail to ring true."[13]
Among more recent assessments, Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader wrote in 2014 that "Sam Fuller's first major accomplishment is a grim piece of agitprop set in the Korean War, where a battle-worn American sergeant (Gene Evans) forms a survival pact with a Korean orphan. Fuller's powerful direction turns a trite story into a vivid study of national and personal identity."[14] In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100.[15]
The critics of Time Out magazine said in a review accessed in 2014 the film is "A characteristically hard-hitting war movie from Fuller, charting the fortunes of Gene Evans' Sergeant Zack, sole survivor of a POW massacre in Korea. Saved by a Korean orphan and joining up with other GIs cut off from their units, Evans' cynical veteran embodies the writer-director's abiding thesis that, to survive the madness of war, a ruthless individualism is necessary. Fuller glamorises neither his loner protagonist nor the war itself: if he clearly supports the US presence in Korea, battle is still a chaotic, deadly affair, and nobody has much idea of why they fight. The action scenes are terrific, belying the movie's very low budget."[16]
Leonard Maltin of Turner Classic Movies Online in his glowing 2014 review awarded the film with 3 1/2 out of 4 stars and said "Samuel Fuller. Gene Evans, Robert Hutton, Steve Brodie, James Edwards, Richard Loo, Sid Melton. Evans is a gutsy American sergeant caught in dizzying turn of events in early days of Korean war; it's a solid melodrama written by Fuller, with a surprisingly contemporary view of war itself."[17] Sean Axmaker also of Turner Classic Movies Online wrote that The Steel Helmet is "The first American film about the Korean War [and] one of the greatest war films ever made."[18]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10.[19]
^ abp. 26 Server, Lee Sam Fuller: Film is a Battleground 1994 McFarland
^ abEZRA GOODMAN (Feb 28, 1965). "Low-Budget Movies With POW!: Most fans never heard of director Sam Fuller, but to some film buffs he has real class. Low-Budget Movies". The New York Times. p. SM42.
^pp. 257–58 Fuller, Samuel A Third Face 2002 Alfred A. Knopf
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