Hell Is for Heroes (1962)

Have you ever marked a Netflix suggestion "Not Interested" and later changed your mind? I have several times, but this may be the first time I've gone ahead and watched such an entry on my list. The very title both catches my eye and repels me, but then, isn't that what war movies are supposed to do? Besides, it formed the basis of a popular "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode, so it had to offer something.

Steve McQueen headlines as John Reese, a WWII master sergeant demoted to private who still acts too much like an authority for comfort. More surprising are the castings of Bobby Darin as the second most prominent private and, in his silver screen debut, Bob Newhart as a military typist who winds up on the battlefield by accident. There's not much to the premise: A U.S. squad, having mistakenly thought they were about to go home, must hold off a German assault across the Siegfried Line despite the Allied forces being spread too thin.

No one actually states the title; it just appears in graffiti, much like in Apocalypse Now. The two films are also similar insofar as they had troubled productions on multiple counts. In this case, about half the counts trace back to McQueen, who, like his character, had trouble getting along with pretty much anybody. Clashes with him led to a change of writer-director from Robert Pirosh to Don Siegel, the latter having less military knowledge and a more antiwar sentiment. This meant, among other things, deliberate monochrome and fewer moments of comic relief. Siegel probably wouldn't have included any if the studio let him have his way. Newhart kept wanting to return to stand-up instead.

One problem in production actually helped a little: Due in part to a shortage of stock footage, the story ends mid-battle. This is not as bad as it sounds at first blush, and indeed, it garnered enough attention to make a cult classic.

Of course, that takes more than the ending. For all the annoyances to the real people involved, the end product is pretty good. It just has some difficulty standing out in a sea of war movies, especially those about the European Theater of Operations. It's not shocking enough for the next All Quiet on the Western Front. It could have used more than a pillbox and a minefield (which they do not handle realistically, alas) to make the action distinctive. Even an increased presence of civilians would have helped the suspense; I'd forgotten there were any besides an avid soldier wannabe.

I would take a break from the genre for a while, except that I have another example to watch before it stops streaming this week....