Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

LeonLouisRicci There is so much going on in a Sam Fuller Movie that the Intensity and Density beg for Wordy Discussions and In Depth Analysis. Make No Mistake, this is and has been done for Anyone Interested in this B-Movie Maverick Auteur and His Unique Form of Filmmaking.This is Fuller at His Best and Most Comfortable. He Draws from His War Experience and then Bathes the Real-Life Memories in Philosophical, Street-Smart Dialog. His Characters are Rough and Exaggerated, Full of Flesh and Vinegar, and make for some Engaging Interactions.The Korean War Film Opens (the movie was made as the U.S. was just entering the police action) with a Gruffy, Gritty, Infantry Sgt with His hands (metaphorically) "tied behind his back". Fuller might be saying that this is the way all Wars are Fought by the Grunts. The Film is one Sensational Encounter after another, as Sgt. Zack is Rescued by a South Korean Tween and they "team-up" to make Their way through No Man's Land.Joining the Two Misfits are more Rag-Tags. A Negro Medic who is Reminded that back Home He had to ride in the Back of the Bus, a Conscientious Objector, a 90-Day Act of Congress Lt., a Soldier who Wheezes and has no Hair from Childhood Rheumatic Fever, a Japanese Bazooka Man whose Family was in a WWII Internment Camp, and a Half-Wit who refuses to Speak.No One is without Flaws and Personality in a Sam Fuller Squad. The Movie was Deemed so Sympathetic to Foreign and Subversive Causes that it got Labeled Communist Propaganda by the FBI and Hoover along with Right-Wing Critics. The Director was even called to Washington D.C. to Explain Himself.Overall the Movie is a One of Kind B-Movie Masterpiece and is now Considered a Classic. Uncompromising with that Surreal Fuller Touch it is a Sight to Behold and One can only Imagine just how Powerful it was in 1951. Rousing Climax with a Touching if Hardly Sentimental Ending that is Nothing Like Anything that came before from Hollywood War Films. Essential Viewing and One of the Best War Movies.

tieman64 "For Kubrick, as for Sam Fuller, combat was a metaphor for virtually all forms of human endeavour. Consequently, Kubrick and Fuller made more good, or great, war films between the two of them than the rest of Hollywood put together." - C. Jerry KutnerLean, mean and angry, Sam Fuller's "The Steel Helmet" remains one of the director's finest films. Shot on a shoestring budget with a group of UCLA students over the course of ten days, the film was also one of the first films of the Korean War film cycle. Unlike it's successors, though, Fuller's tone is one of extreme cynicism. "Helmet" was the first Hollywood film to mention the internment of Japanese Americans in WW2 prison camps, and elsewhere Fuller deftly deals with racism, by including a North Korean prisoner who baits a black soldier into conversation with accounts of American society's Jim Crow rules.There are other points of interest: a young Korean kid, dubbed "Short Round", who prove influential on George Lucas' "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", the film contains an appropriately tense sniper sequence, the film was one of the few from its era to deal with shell-shock, mental fatigue and war crimes, and of course Gene Evans, who plays Sergeant Zack, offers us a wonderful character. He's a gruff, bearish man. A seasoned veteran who has only one thing on his mind: personal survival. Indeed, most of the film's best sequences involve Zack and Short Round interacting. Zack teaches the kid how to survive in the physical, whilst Shorty schools Zack in appreciating the spiritual.Unsurprisingly – a nice touch by Fuller - much of the film's violence takes place in a Buddhist temple; war in a sanctuary of peace, the strategically located temple prostituted as an instrument of pain.The film's politics baffled critics upon release. The right viewed it as being an attack on the Korean war and accused Fuller of being a "commie sympathiser", whilst the left thought Fuller was a sell out, largely due to a last act sequence in which a North Korean soldier breaks the Geneva convention and ruthlessly kills our cute little South Korean kid. Commies are bad, see, so lets waste those ruthless child killers! In truth, the film is simply naive (the US shouldn't have been in Korea, shouldn't have challenged the populaces wishes for unification and reforms, and indeed committed countless huge war crimes and only made things much worse), a tone which clashes with the beautiful pessimism of Fuller's writing. His scripts are typically fast paced, taut, efficient and masculine, and we see that here with "Helmet". Fuller writes like a pulp journalist, his jargon hard; a kind of blunt poetry. 8/10 – Worth one viewing.

chaos-rampant What could have been a flimsy, disposable b-movie in the hands of other, less competent directors, becomes an evocative war tale of grit, fear, loss and redemption in the hands of Sam Fuller. There's no abstract sophistication or sentimental pap though: this is raw and true film-making, unpretentious and stripped of all fat. Director Sam Fuller is a unique beast in the American underground: having worked both as a crime report for NYC newspapers before he enlisted as a soldier in WWII, it comes natural then that the Steel Helmet has the urgency and power of both of his pre-directorial careers. A reporter's sense of story and characters above all and the firsthand experience of a war veteran. True to itself, simple but never simplistic, with respect to the subject matter and without any flag waving, The Steel Helmet is better than it had any right to be. It is still a low-profile (in terms of stars and publicity or lack thereof) b-movie but shot with a conviction and passion few a-list movies can muster.

MisterWhiplash Samuel Fuller's first great hard-boiled war movie doesn't seem to strike up the same controversy that it apparently did back in the 1950s. Maybe an extra fifty-five years of the United States becoming more liberal in certain stances, such as where black people can sit on a bus or if the Japanese internment camps were such a good idea, has changed the film in a certain respect. But what hasn't changed is Fuller's immediate sense of danger and drama, of the tough bond between soldiers in combat, and what it means to be patriotic in the face of the grittiest odds. I also found it a fascinating feat, especially this early in Fuller's career, to set up not only a quasi-prototype of the Fuller bad-ass that would continue on in many of his films (one definitely would see a form or two of this in the Big Red One), but criticizing this figure. And meanwhile Fuller pumps up his war film with a staggering showcase of horrific war violence which, up until the climax, is largely off-screen with only the sound effects of bullets streaming fast meant for emphasis, and the camera acting as a real presence in the room during the temple, acting as exclamation pointer and a tool for the suspense.The Fuller figure in the film, which ends up becoming the central one even amid the ensemble, is Sgt. Zack, with his scruffy beard, hard talk, and odd principles ("best in the infantry", Zack says, as you either live or die). But of all things, Fuller uses a little Korean boy, who sings the entire Korean national anthem- also Audl Yange Syne- and has a deep belief in Buddhist traditions. It's not any kind of little gimmick to garner the audience's sympathies, however, and by not calling too much attention to it there's strength in Zack's very subtle change by the end of the film. He's still going to be a bit of a brutish guy who may let his emotions get the better of him, and charges onward even when thinking he's the only real tough guy in the army. But Fuller seems to not be making him a real true-blue hero in the John Wayne sense: he's a lot more of a complicated tough-guy protagonist, who played by Gene Evans plays him convincingly as a man who's principles of strength on the battlefield get mixed up when his conscience enters into things. He remains one of Fuller's coolest and a benchmark in B war movie characters.What's so strange about the Steel Helmet ends up being how it uses so much on a minuscule budget. Shot in ten days, Fuller structured the script mostly as if it was a stage play; 2/3 of the film is set in the temple, as the characters stay low, get a run-in with a North Korean infiltrator, try and fix a radio, and generally have a lot of talks about what it is to fight in war and whatnot. It's never boring for second, even as one might wonder when, like in Night of the Living Dead, the ominous forces of the outside will come in and break up the monotony of suspense. I loved little moments like when the one soldier thinks his grenade is about to explode right on his belt if he stands up, or when Zack describes who he'd let wear his helmet based on an insane D-Day story, or when the radio operator started growing hair. Even dialog that should be dated when the North Korean asks the black soldier about discrimination in America comes off as interesting. And then, suddenly, Fuller will whip up the camera and editing into a sharp frenzy when it comes time for battle, or make it as something to almost keep the soldiers themselves on their toes. And it's something to admit as fearless to have only a hand-full of extras and a handful of special effects to make a battle scene just as great as anything in the Big Red One- which are some of the best war battles in film history.A real 'guy' movie that doesn't kid its own nature about men from varying cultures all plopped together in an insane conflict, with quick flashes of humor and sudden, unexpected violence, and a final message on the title card that will resonate long as men carry big guns and wear those helmets.