The Steel Helmet (1951, Samuel Fuller) (Patreon)

73/100

Second viewing, last seen at NYU in 1994. It seemed revelatory to me then, probably because I hadn't yet watched enough grunt-centric war movies to recognize their tropes; Fuller's best work also boasts a certain gritty shock value that loses its potency, just a little, upon repeat viewings. (I still love Pickup on South Street and Shock Corridor, but neither one as much as I did the first time.) His main achievement here—apart from somehow getting Steel Helmet into theaters only about six months after the Korean War formally began!—is giving pungent life to stock situations, most notably "gruff dogface reluctantly bonds with annoyingly servile and cheerful local kid." To be honest, the kid is  nauseatingly cute, but that's counterbalanced by unsung Fuller fave Gene Evans, who's so caustically charismatic that I'm surprised he wasn't offered more proto-Eastwood lead roles. (More typical is his small part as Ace in the Hole's deputy sheriff, later this same year.) Steel Helmet is replete with familiar, predictable story beats, including the one at the very end that clarifies its title's meaning; Fuller strips them of cheap sentiment, and the stoic lack of fussiness allows them to properly tug at you. At the same time, he enjoys subverting expectations—one soldier accidentally removing the pin from a grenade (that's now pressed against his body or something) seems to kick off a setpiece that might occupy several incredibly tense minutes...until Sgt. Tanaka—who's not the designated hero, mind—just strides over and solves the problem in two seconds flat, without breaking a sweat. The entire movie has the ring of unemphatic truth, from snoring that's mistaken for incoming ordnance to the wry revelation that "Auld Lang Syne" shares its melody with what had briefly (1945–48) been the Korean national anthem. Its tone is exemplified by the dead priest's accordion case that's lost three letters from a stencilled FATHER PAUL, prompting Zack to repeatedly call the ordinary-sized guy who's now carrying it Fat Paul.

Admittedly, Fuller's negligible Lippert Pictures budget reveals itself onscreen—I'm not at all surprised, for example, to learn that exteriors were shot primarily in L.A.'s Griffith Park. (Temple set's quite impressive, though.) Making The Steel Helmet guerrilla-style for peanuts, however, allowed for an atypically complex acknowledgement of American racism, cannily placed in the mouth of a North Korean POW who's employing it as a means of ineffective psychological manipulation. Obviously, the guy's on-target pointing out that Cpl. Thompson, when not in uniform, has to sit at the back of any city bus, and that Sgt. Tanaka himself might well have recently spent time in an internment camp; the charges sting, but they don't feel preachy coming from someone who's merely trying to save his own skin, and the way that they're shrugged off, in both instances—but not, crucially, denied or refuted; Thompson and Tanaka just aren't gonna fall for such a tacky ploy—paradoxically lends them more credence. A fact that has to be dealt with, but not right now. I'd like to believe that's part of what Fuller had in mind when he chose to superimpose THERE IS NO END TO THIS STORY over the movie's final shot, though of course it more broadly refers to the omnipresent evil of war itself, and the courage of those who fight (on the "good" side, at least, which everyone always believes themselves to inhabit). In any case, The Steel Helmet transcends genre cliché via disarming honesty and a complete lack of pretension (sole exception: the silent G.I. who just stands there moaning "Oh no" when he's stabbed to death; that's pretty cheesy), emerging as one of the few first-rate war movies that remains entirely at ground level. I'd always assumed that it was the inspiration for Temple of Doom's Short Round, too, but now find that he was named after Huyck and Katz's dog?! Are they all named after fucking dogs? Were there also dogs named Belloq and Sallah and Willie and...oh, okay, Mutt, fair enough.