Fuller’s first great war movie. Fellow WWII vet Gene Evans plays a cigar-chompin’ slang-throwin’ tough guy, picking up a South Korean kid and a stray medic before linking up with a troop with an undercooked commanding officer. The men die off one at a time to traps and snipers and spies, then they die all at once during an all-out shooting battle at the temple where they’re camping.
Medic James Edwards is resourceful:
Our tough guy, through the clearing smoke:
Survivors:
Haven’t seen this in a long time – it’s the snowy one about the guys left behind when the larger army moves out, ordered to act as if they’re the entire army to fool the enemy into staying put as long as possible. Our dudes get picked off until paranoid Richard Basehart is the highest rank. The whole drama of whether Basehart will be able to lead effectively if he’s in charge is overblown, because he’s only in charge for the last ten minutes and he leads just fine. For me the real drama was the nighttime conversation between him and Gene Evans. Evans is a gruff, down-to-earth character actor and Basehart a tormented over-enunciating drama-school type, and it’s a relief that they manage to inhabit the same scene without it seeming ridiculous.