Review of Hell Is for Heroes (1962) by Donald W — 09 Jul 2014

This is a good World War II movie. It's set in 1944 France on the Siegfried Line. They did a good job of recreating the tank traps and pill boxes the Germans had built. In the story an infantry company is sent up to the line to break through after being told they were going home after a short period of Rest and Recreation.

Their top Sergeant is played by Fess Parker. This was before the Daniel Boone TV show but after the Davy Crocket Disney shows. He plays a tough sergeant but with a little of Davy Crocket's charm. The star of the movie is Steve McQueen.

This was right about the time he was becoming a big star. He plays a combat veteran who is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and had been demoted from Sergeant Major to private. It's implied that Fess Parker's character is an old friend who has pulled strings to get him assigned to his unit instead of being sent to prison.

When this movie was made Viet Nam was not yet in the news and World War II vets were about the same age as the veterans of the First Iraq War are now. Many of the actors in this movie are too old to be playing World War II soldiers.

The one exception is Bob Newhart who plays a comic role as a rear area office worker who gets lost and winds up on the front lines. This was his first movie and he's very young when this movie was made.

In the movie when a small squad of soldiers wakes up in the morning they find that the rest of their company has moved to a different section of the front and they have been left behind. Fess Parker shows up and tells them that they were left to defend the gap in the line and reinforcements would arrive the next day.

They can't let the Germans know that they are outnumbered. The rest of the movie is the story of the strategies they used to fool the Germans for the next 24 hours. The movie is a good tribute to the World War II Vets without the rah-rah for our side dialog from war movies from the 1940's and early 1950's.

I first saw this movie on TV when I was a teenager. At the time I was a big Daniel Boone and Fess Parker fan.