# The Steel Helmet

The Steel Helmet is a 1951 American independent war film directed, written, and produced by Samuel Fuller during the Korean War. The cast stars Gene Evans, Robert Hutton, Steve Brodie, James Edwards, and Richard Loo. It was the first American film about the war and the first of several war films by Fuller.

## Plot

In Korea, U.S. Army Sergeant Zack survives a massacre of American prisoners of war by the Korean People's Army after his M1 helmet (the titular "steel helmet") saves him from a bullet intended for his head. Left bound and injured as the sole survivor of his surrendered unit, Zack struggles to get up a steep hill and freezes at the approach of a Buddhist boy with a gun, who decides to free him and helps treat his wounds with sulfa powder. When the boy refuses to leave, Zack relents, dubs him "Short Round", and directs him to gather clothing and equipment from his dead comrades to join him as he tries to find friendly lines.
Zack and Short Round come across Corporal Thompson, an African American 19th Infantry medic, also the sole survivor of his platoon. They encounter a patrol led by inexperienced Officer Candidate Lieutenant Driscoll, whose men say that Thompson is a "straggler" who intentionally separated himself from his platoon and that the North Koreans only kept him alive to treat their wounded. When a sniper team attacks, Zack and Japanese American Sergeant Tanaka kill the marksmen. Zack reluctantly agrees to guide the patrol to a Buddhist temple to establish an observation post, but on the way, Lt. Driscoll orders a soldier to collect a casualty's dog tags, triggering a booby trap that kills the soldier.
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 to subvert Thompson and Tanaka by pointing out the racism they face in the United States and among their supposed comrades, but his attempts fail and the major is captured by Zack, whose last assignment was to bring a prisoner for questioning, with furlough as a potential reward. Before they leave, Lt. Driscoll asks to exchange helmets for luck, but Zack refuses out of disrespect.
Later, Short Round is killed by a North Korean sniper, devastating Zack. When the major mocks the Buddhist prayer the boy wrote for Zack, Zack loses control and wounds him. Driscoll upbraids Zack for failing to remain professional, and Zack demands that Thompson heal the major so he can be interrogated at headquarters.
The patrol spots a large North Korean force approaching and calls for an artillery strike, but it only alerts the North Koreans to their presence, and they mount an assault on the temple with a tank. The patrol repels the attack, but take severe casualties; by the end, only Zack, Thompson, Tanaka, and the unit's radio operator survive. Overcome by the chaos, Zack, a World War II veteran, suffers a flashback, imagining he is back at the Normandy landings searching for his colonel.
Some time later, with the battle over, a U.S. Army infantry unit arrives to relieve the beleaguered survivors. As he leaves the temple, Zack goes to Lt. Driscoll's grave, swaps their helmets, and trudges on. The men walk away through an archway as an intertitle reads, "There is no end to this story."

## Cast

* Gene Evans as Sergeant Zack
* Robert Hutton as Private Bronte
* Steve Brodie as Lieutenant Driscoll
* James Edwards as Corporal Thompson
* Richard Loo as Sergeant Tanaka
* Sid Melton as Joe
* Richard Monahan as Private Baldy
* William Chun as "Short Round"
* Harold Fong as The Red
* Neyle Morrow as First GI
* Lynn Stalmaster as Second Lieutenant

## Production

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 for $104,000.
According to Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies, Fuller wrote the script in a week. The Steel Helmet grossed more than $2 million.
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. Army personnel summoned Fuller for a conference on the film, 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. 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.
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. Mickey Knox claimed to have been Fuller's first choice for Zack, but he turned the film down.

## Reception and legacy

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."
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."
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."
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." 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."
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." 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.
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."
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."
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.