Category: Movies You’ve Never Heard Of

One more step and I’ll fill your guts with lead.

That’s the tagline on one of “Men in War’s” posters, with Aldo Ray’s character Montana leveling his gun at Robert Ryan.

If you’re a battle-hardened veteran of World War II movies made in the 1950s, you’ll like this one. For one, it’s Korea, not WWII.

For another, there’s not a lot of jingoistic flag-waving, if any. Robert Ryan was a pacifist–his wife a Quaker–who later came to regret some of his characters as being against his beliefs.

The “lost platoon” story premise has been used for as long as stories have been told. Here, Ryan and his men are behind enemy lines and need to get back to the rest of the 24th Infantry Division.

“Men in War” is a tough little drama that confounds many of the war cinema stereotypes of the Fifties. We have cowards, one played by Vic Morrow. We have those who kill, seemingly without logic. Many of the deaths are gritty; no Wilhelm screams here.

Interestingly, “Men in War” was filmed largely at Malibu Creek State Park, the future site of the Korean War M*A*S*H (also filmed at Bronson Canyon).

Michael Phillips quotes J.R. Jones’ biography of Ryan, saying that the movie is

downright existential, focused like a telescope on the wild terrain and the men’s desperate, improvised tactics against an encroaching but unseen enemy.

One of the actors is still with us today: the seemingly immortal Nehemiah Persoff (born 1919), living in Cambria, California. Persoff lost his wife, Thia, in 2021, but he’s reportedly still alive and painting near Moonstone Beach.

“Men in War” hits a sweet spot, at least with me, in that it’s unique enough to snag my attention but old-school enough that it’s comfortable Saturday morning fare.

It ran only from 1963 to 1965, but Kraft Suspense Theater (later titled Crisis) had some of the underpinnings of a great anthology show, much like Twilight Zone: name actors, accomplished directors, color in an era of black and white, a full hour-long slot, generous budgets, and the massive Universal lot to work with.

For anyone who loves Hitchcock or Twilight Zones–and has seen them all and is hungry for more–you’d think that you’ve stumbled on a treasure trove of lost films and episodes when you first see Kraft.

But, somehow, most of the shows fail. That somehow can be traced to the weak writing. Weak writing is only further weakened when it has to fill an hour-long slot–a problem that plagued even writers of Twilight Zone.

One episode that works, though, is The Gun. It’s sinister in so many ways. Start with the actors.

Veteran actor Eddie Albert plays a dentist who’s a kind, concerned father. This is difficult because his son, played by Peter Lazer, is genuinely disturbed. With a husky man-voice paired with the body of a teenager, not to mention an oddly misshapen head and swollen mouth, actor Lazer simply looks creepy.

After the family house is robbed and Albert fails to shoot the robber at the behest of wife Dina Merrill, Merrill develops a fascination with guns that she passes onto Lazer.

At the same time, Lazer and a friend torment a neighbor old lady, whose shaky mental health is exacerbated when jets from the nearby air force base fly overhead.

The torment even extends to Lazer and friend anonymously supplying the lady with a bolt and ammunition for her WWI-era rifle that’s been missing a bolt.

Why does he do this? Lazer later says to help her protect herself. But as a viewer, it feels that Lazer helps her complete her rifle only as an act of further bullying.

The only wrong note in The Gun is the very ending. But it’s so freakishly wrong that it almost feels surreal and perfect.

Judging by Go for Broke‘s posters and related promotional material, you’d think that this Robert Pirosh picture is yet another post-WWII jingoistic war film. We see strapping blonde Van Johnson hoisting a rifle and chasing the Italian ladies.

The title, too, evokes visions of Battleground (1949)–also starring Van Johnson and directed by Robert Pirosh–and the wartime Gung Ho (1943).

No doubt the style of promotion was intended to make the film palatable to the general public in 1951-1952.

Those were sly disguises for this sharp film.

Instead, Van Johnson takes a distant back seat to the real stars: the 442nd, composed of second-generation Americans born of Japanese parents–Nisei.

Johnson seethes with a quiet sourness when he realizes that he’s in charge of all of these so-called Buta-head (or Buddhahead) Nisei from Hawaii and Kotonks from the mainland U.S.

In fact, one layer of the movie is the internal tension between the Buta-heads and the Kotonks.

Warner Anderson’s Col. Pence issues a corrective toward the beginning of the film when Van Johnson’s character requests a transfer to another unit.

First, he says, they’re not “Japs” but “Japanese-Americans” or Nisei. Second, they’re all volunteers. And third, the White officers are actually referred to as haoles, a Hawaiian term for non-Hawaiians.

The story is told with finesse and restraint. Johnson’s character is no pig-headed bigot; he’s just quietly aggrieved and confused.

By the end of the movie, Van Johnson’s view of the men of the 442nd changes, but it’s a very slow realization.

There are no long Capra-esque monologues about the indignities faced by the 442nd. Nor is this the shove-it-down-your-throat social commentary that modern viewers are so accustomed to.

Characters say how they feel, but it’s within the dialogue and it feels natural. In fact, most of the soldiers–with the exception of Don Haggerty as Sgt. Culley–aren’t really put out by the 442nd soldiers at all.

Go for Broke is now in the public domain, so it’s available on YouTube and on Amazon Prime for free.

 

In some kind of dream classic film world, you would watch a movie with Broderick Crawford, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Kiley, Neville Brand, with a brief walk-on from Charles Bronson. It’s no dream, it’s reality, but you have to claw back to 1951 for that one–well before most of those names had achieved star status.

Crawford is as solid as ever, and it’s fascinating to see Neville Brand’s face smooth and young. The script is spot-on and clever. There are plenty of twists all the way to the end; it’s not as predictable as you might think at first.

Matt Crowley, as Smoothie, exudes a kind of Kevin Spacey menace, and all I could think about was that Spacey would fit that part well in a remake, and it’s a rich part.

Note

Lynn Baggett plays floozy Peggy Clancy so well, perhaps because in real life she had her own set of problems. In one of the most unfortunate acts of her life, she ran over and killed 9 year-old Joel Watnick at the corner of Orlando Avenue and Waring in Los Angeles, on July 7, 1954. She had borrowed a station wagon from actor George Tobias, best known to modern audiences as Abner Kravitz in Bewitched.

If she had stopped, it may have been one thing. But Baggett sped away. To compound her evasion, she took part of the car to Arnold’s Body Shop at 8746 Baird Avenue, Northridge (now AutoWorx) to repair the damage and the chassis to 13627 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks to straighten it out. She spent 55 days in jail.