Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27782 in VHS
• Released on: 1998-10-30
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

Amazon.com
Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans) is the only survivor after his platoon is executed by North Koreans. He pulls himself along painfully, hands tied behind his back with his own bootlaces, until he is discovered by a 10-year-old South Korean boy. He dubs the boy Short Round, and the two eventually hook up with an infantry squad. They find a Buddhist temple, which they take over to use as an observation post. The squad is a group of misfits: a black medic, a World War II conscientious objector, a Japanese American WWII vet, a mute, and a 90-day-wonder Officer Candidate School grad in charge. The Steel Helmet has a gritty, authentic look that transcends its low budget and occasional staginess; all the GIs have Vaseline smeared on their faces and grimy uniforms. More notable, though, is the lack of propagandizing. "Commies" are mentioned, but anti-Communist rhetoric is not. There's a distinct lack of John Wayne-style heroics in this film, and director Sam Fuller never misses an opportunity to work in his sociopolitical agenda. With a black character who's treated on an equal footing with the white GIs and open references to Jim Crow laws and the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, it points up why Fuller confounded critics on the Left and Right both. Many of the characters and situations were culled directly from combat vet Fuller's war diaries. Strong, profound stuff for 195l, and a film that will stick in your head for days. Highly recommended for fans of Sam Fuller and war films alike. --Jerry Renshaw

Customer Reviews

SAMUEL FULLER, OPUS 3
***** 1951. Written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller. THE STEEL HELMET was the first American movie about the Korea war which started just six months before its theatrical release. Eight soldiers, trapped in a Buddhist temple, fight the communist North Korean army. Be prepared for eighty-five minutes of non-stop tension. Samuel Fuller reveals here his taste for bizarre scenes which leave you wondering why this director isn't more appreciated. You can now buy the DVD version of this movie here Eclipse Series 5 - The First Films of Samuel Fuller (The Baron of Arizona / I Shot Jesse James / The Steel Helmet) (Criterion Collection), Masterpiece.

Worth The Hunt
It's been a while since I've seen this, but I originally checked it out because it's referred to in "Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom", and wound up really liking it.

I remember it as being a friendship story between a U.S. soldier and young boy (dubbed "Short Round", just like the "Temple Of Doom" character) during the Korean War. It's directed by Sam Fuller, who's made other vivid films like "Shock Corridor" and "The Big Red One". His films can be brash and lurid, but I like the grit of his war pictures - I think his own experiences as a war correspondent gives them a verisimilitude that most contemporary takes lack.

Unfortunately, it's not available on DVD yet - it's out there on VHS, so hopefully you can see it on cable, or rent it at a really good video store (you know the kind - the ones that have sections of titles sorted by director). It's worth the effort!

The unbridle of the War may become a growing up device!

During Korea's War, an American patrol is exterminated except Zack, a veteran Lieutenant. But again he will be sent into a suicide mission; to take by storm a Temple placed at the top of a hill. Despite Driscoll and Zack don't agree one each other. There will be an intense enemy besiege and when he becomes again the only survivor, he will put his helmet on Driscoll's grave.

The multiple personal experiences lived by Sam Fuller are shown with all its crude nakedness, without moral codes or conventional hindrances. He was an unpleasant filmmaker for the cinema, due he did not seem to understand the people wanted to forget the horrors and nasty fears of a bloody War, while he insisted over and over around this theme. It's not a mere casualty he filmed such penetrating Noir films in between: Pick up on South Street would seem to confirm it. When he realized about it, he turned his camera toward the inner boundaries of the soul of the society (Shock corridor and The naked kiss), and representing to may sectors what eventually the new German generations to come in the seventies for their country; a little stone in the shoe; an incessant timber in the collective conscious.

Through the years this film has become in significance what The Burmese harp for Japan; an active and untiring voice without self indulgent expressions, allowing the images talk by themselves.

Stunning, absorbing and mesmerizing movie.