Review: Hell is for Heroes

WWII action drama has Harry Guardino leading a small troop of American soldiers trying to hold off a seemingly inevitable German advance. Their plan is to make themselves look like a larger unit than they are, with James Coburn fixing a jeep to make it sound like a tank (don’t ask me how he does this, but I’ll buy it), and Bob Newhart plays a lost soldier (who just happens to stumble into the platoon) who is recruited and asked to stay and pretend to be talking to HQ on the phone and fool the eavesdropping Germans (Claiming to be an ‘Entertainment Director’ he claims the men are getting tired of watching the same old movies!). Steve McQueen is the hard drinking, insubordinate, stubborn, frequently disciplined loner newly assigned to the group. Fess Parker is the platoon sergeant familiar with McQueen’s shortcomings but also knows he’s a great and much-needed soldier when the chips are down. Nick Adams plays a likeable Polish refugee who tries to join the platoon, clinging on to them for dear life. Singer Bobby Darin plays the scrounger of the platoon.

Effective, low-budget 1962 Don Siegel (“Dirty Harry”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) war film has a little bit of everything- anti-hero (that would be Steve McQueen in an ultimately heroic, but not very likeable part), humour (a very young Bob Newhart, integrating one of his amusing monologues into the story, and in my view, doing it successfully), action film (Siegel handles these battle scenes terrifically), and hell even a little bit of a weepie with Nick Adams, in perhaps his best-ever role as the well-meaning, but often distracting Polish refugee.

Terrific cast of familiar faces, with Adams and McQueen on top, Newhart stealing a few scenes, Parker and Guardino both rock solid, Coburn excellent in an unusually pensive role (he even wears nerdy glasses. James Coburn!), and even Bobby Darin fits his role well enough. It all works very well, a terrific B-movie that rarely shows its financial limitations. Dud ending, however. It was a nice idea, but it is also a botched one that will leave viewers thinking ‘Huh? Did I blink and miss something?. Scripted by Robert Pirosh (“Battleground”, “A Day at the Races”) and Richard Carr (“Heaven With a Gun”), from a story by Pirosh.

Rating: B-