A gritty combat drama with Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Harry Guardino?  Why wasn’t this on Blu ten years ago?  Don Siegel directs an entertaining ‘infantry squad in trouble’ thriller with his expected hard-edged, unsentimental attitude. Bob Newhart excels via an audience-pleasing comic bit but Bobby Darin’s co-starring position is diminished by the aggressive McQueen. His anti-social private uses good judgment in a bold counter-attack — which doesn’t go well at all. Other members of this Unlucky Bunch of ditch dogs are Fess Parker, Nick Adams and Mike Kellin.

Hell is for Heroes
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1962 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date April 11, 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Steve McQueen, Bobby Darin, Fess Parker, Harry Guardino, James Coburn, Bob Newhart, Nick Adams, Stephen Ferry, Mike Kellin, Simon Prescott, Joseph Hoover, Robert Phillips, Bill Mullikin, L.Q. Jones, Don Haggerty, Michele Montau.
Cinematography: Harold Lipstein
Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Howard Richmond
Film Editor: Howard Smith
Visual Effects: John P. Fulton
Original Music: Leonard Rosenman
Screenplay by Richard Carr, Robert Pirosh story by Pirosh
Produced by Henry Blanke
Directed by Donald Siegel

Here’s one of the better down ‘n’ dirty combat sagas, and one that we’re surprised hasn’t surfaced a lot sooner on Blu-ray — it’s a gritty no-nonsense ordeal starring Steve McQueen, with James Coburn, and it’s directed in fine style by Don Siegel. We loved it on TV in the 1960s, too.

The ‘single patrol’ combat picture was always a Hollywood mainstay. We assume that every combat unit feels isolated and vulnerable, fighting fear and desperation as much as they do the enemy. Veteran screenwriter Robert Pirosh (A Day at the Races, I Married a Witch) won an Oscar for his story and screenplay for 1949’s Battleground, using his comedy skills to good effect in the frozen setting of the Battle of the Bulge. Pirosh had served as an officer in real WW2 combat, and veterans judged Battleground to be faithful to their experience.

Robert Pirosh reportedly originated Hell is for Heroes, but the production was ‘troubled’ — plagued with front office indifference and with trouble on the set. Initially writing, directing and maybe even co-producing, Pirosh exited early on, retaining only the writing credits. Director Don Siegel took over, downplaying the lighter content in Pirosh’s screenplay. Even more difficulty came from actor Steve McQueen, who (reportedly) clashed with his director and his fellow actors. For whatever reason, when the budget ran out Paramount simply shut down the shoot, before filming the final battle. Interestingly, pulling the plug at that point seems to have made things better — the movie wraps up with an intriguing, unique sudden stop.

Robert Pirosh seems to have had the last laugh — he went on to originate the Combat TV show as ‘series developer,’ a job that lasted for four years and 120 episodes. Even kids considered Hell is for Heroes something of a warm-up for the Vic Morrow – Rick Jason TV show. Heroes’ music composer Leonard Rosenman scored the TV show as well.

Much of the story behind Hell is for Heroes comes from Don Siegel’s memoirs, and Steve McQueen’s feisty attitude jibes with reports from his other directors. McQueen’s character Private Reese looks genuinely pissed off in every scene, which may not have all been acting; quotes about McQueen from co-stars Bobby Darin and Bob Newhart seem careful to avoid direct sour-grapes confrontation.

The basic storyline is said to have been derived from a real situation in France, when troop movements in the Battle of the Bulge left some fronts sparsely covered. Private John Reese (Steve McQueen), a decorated combat hero recently broken in rank, joins up with a battalion slated to return to the states. It’s a smooth-running unit: the tough Sergeant Larkin (Harry Guardino) fills in when fair-minded Sergeant Pike (Fess Parker) is absent. Private J.J. Corby (Bobby Darin) wheels and deals in everything from silver place settings to ball-point pens. Corporal Henshaw (James Coburn) is a compulsive mechanic and tinkerer. And Polish-born Private Kolinsky (Mike Kellin) takes care of Homer (Nick Adams), a displaced Polish kid escaped from a German work camp.

The platoon is then ordered to return to the front and assigned to hold a line far too wide for such a small force. They use various ruses to give the illusion of greater strength. Additional help comes when lost clerk typist Private James E. Driscoll (Bob Newhart) wanders in and is made a combat soldier for the day; Henshaw rigs Driscoll’s jeep to give the impression of motorized activity.

Things go well until nightfall, when a German attack stuns the group. Pvt. Reese takes authority far above his pay grade, and decides that some kind of counter-strike is necessary to keep the Germans from realizing how few soldiers they’re facing. Reese and two other strike at a German machine gun implacement, a move that backfires, with casualties. Larkin is furious, and Reese comes within a hair-trigger of shooting his own superior.

Hell is for Heroes makes the most of its small-scale virtues, as a variation on the ‘patrol way out on a limb’ storyline, like Anthony Mann’s excellent Men in War. Heroes may have originated as a project to showcase singing star Bobby Darin, the star of Paramount’s previous Too Late Blues, also co-written by Richard Carr. Playing second fiddle to anybody was something antithetical to Steve McQueen’s basic character — even if he signed on with the understanding that the spotlight was to be shared, McQueen was in no way the type to Go Along to Get Along.

From his experience with Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen surely learned how a star can leverage his clout for his own convenience — Sinatra thought nothing of throwing a studio’s budget into the red, if he wanted his meal times shifted, or to leave early to catch a plane to perform in Vegas. In the next year’s The Great Escape, McQueen’s demands, foot dragging and general aggravation forced producer-director John Sturges to reorganize the whole show to the star’s requirements. It was the beginning of the great director Sturges’ disenchantment with Hollywood in general.

Steve McQueen was always a quick study. After his experience on The Honeymoon Machine it’s likely that McQueen wanted to stay far away from anything comedic. Although director Siegel is on record saying that he wanted to skip some of the Pirosh-scripted lighter moments, they also could have been dropped because McQueen wanted to tilt the story in his favor: losing jokes would diminish Darin and Newhart’s share of the spotlight.  ↑

The Paramount front office may have asked Robert Pirosh to leave the show because he couldn’t control McQueen. The relentlessly efficient replacement Don Siegel succeeded in securing Steve McQueen’s cooperation, by mostly giving the star what he wanted, within reason. Private Reese’s resentful attitude makes a big statement without completely overriding the other players.

Don Siegel was also chosen to ride the budget on a picture not meant to be overly expensive. Using just a few trucks, a jeep, and lots of gunpowder, it’s mostly a cut-down affair, unlike bloated, subsidized Army recruiting epics from a few years before. The sharp script and taut direction put some sting back in Hollywood combat — the Billing Order is no help in predicting which cast members will become casualties.

Hell is for Heroes also took a step beyond earlier low-budget combat ‘message’ pictures, the kind with scripts that couldn’t secure Department of Defense cooperation. Stanley Kramer started the trend with his Home of the Brave, which was about a small group of soldiers – and race relations. Robert Aldrich’s Attack was about a small group of soldiers – and enlisted men shooting their own officers in self defense. By the end of the 1950s the wind had shifted to the right. Lewis Milestone inverted his classic All Quiet on the Western Front into the pro-Pentagon Pork Chop Hill (also featuring Harry Guardino). Its message was that appeasement politics made a winnable war into an incompetent disaster.

Siegel dropped most elements not immediately related to survival in a foxhole — even action heroes Steve McQueen and James Coburn look mighty frazzled in the fighting. We can’t take our eyes from McQueen, who behaves as if he sleeps with a machine gun. We see his inner tension steadily build. Soldiers in movies rarely seem to run out of ammo, but even Private Reese runs into trouble when his weapon jams. At one point he’s so desperate that he throws his helmet at a German soldier. Yet he’s no invincible Sgt. Rock. When Reese takes an unauthorized calculated risk his effort backfires, big time.

Forget melodramatic combat clichés. Nobody passes around pictures of his sweetheart, talks about the future after the war, or reminisces about his dog … all clues that the speaker will soon Buy The Farm. McQueen’s own The War Lover (released six months later) has such clumsy ironic foreshadowing that it now plays as an unintentional comedy. Yes, the members of this platoon are somewhat typed, but none of the writing is lazy.

↑   The energetic Nick Adams does a great job as the young Pole, as Robert Blake had performed in Pork Chop Hill. Harry Guardino carries a big part of the film’s exposition; he would later excel in Siegel’s Madigan. Guardino also later starred in a movie titled The Hell with Heroes, guaranteeing instant confusion in filmographies.

↘  James Coburn seems to shift into low-key mode in his three films with Steve McQueen. His Corporal Henshaw wears eyeglasses and is quietly attentive. Fess Parker’s Sergeant Pike isn’t always on the front lines; he has to figure out what to do about Pvt. Reese’s ignoring orders — with the knowledge that the decorated Reese has more hard combat experience than anybody. Mike Kellin is always welcome, even if we worry that he’ll be an early victim of the hostilities. ↙

Since Hell is for Heroes has next to no love interest the studio likely fought for its comic aspect, to appeal to a wider audience. Audiences already knew Bob Newhart as that ‘button-down’ standup comic, and he’s even identified as such in the trailer. Against Don Siegel’s advice, the front office insisted that special light comedy business be set aside for Newhart’s Private Driscoll. When it’s discovered that the Germans have planted a listening device next to the platoon’s field phone, Driscoll fakes communications that make the feeble patrol sound like an entire division. Newhart scores with messages about the recreation facilities. The funny telephone routine doesn’t harm the tone, and in fact garnered the film’s most enthusiastic praise.

Hell is for Heroes sticks in the mind for its unpretentious tone and progressive ending, which skips the sermonizing so common in 1950s combat pix. It dares to leave several characters unresolved, as well as the battle itself. McQueen’s caustic loner does his best, gets a raw deal, and tries to compensate with a near-suicidal effort. This is one of the better in-the-trenches WW2 combat films.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of Hell is for Heroes looks perfect, pristine, untouched on Blu-ray. Everything comes off well, even the sequences with day-for night filming. Equally arresting are the hard-cut main titles with Leonard Rosenman’s no-nonsense music score. The optical-zoom final shot, which goes purposely grainy and soft, felt very disturbing in 1962.

The war-movie team of Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin are once again on the job; Rubin has written extensively about this picture and says it’s one of his favorites. I was happy to discover that some of my ‘guesses’ about the politics of the film’s production are accurate — writer Richard Carr was indeed brought on to adujst the script to Steve McQueen’s liking. They also name the Paramount executive who insisted that Bob Newhart be in the show. Newhart’s lighter material works because it’s a welcome break from the rest of the movie’s sober outlook.

Rubin has a nice story from when he was a kid, accidentally bumping into Steve McQueen on a Culver City street. The information-packed commentary lets us know that the company decided to shoot more scenes at night because day filming on the Northern California location was unbearably hot. The relatively barren landscape certainly does not say ‘France,’ but we are reminded that France is not all forests — the part-wasteland seen in the 1953 The Wages of Fear was created on French locations.

Again, there’s only one mystery about this Blu-ray of Hell is for Heroes: why the hell wasn’t it released on disc much earlier?

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Hell is for Heroes
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: April 10, 2023
(6916hell)

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