Hell Is for Heroes

World War II drama where the action centers around a single maneuver by a squad of GIs in retaliation against the force of the German Siegfried line. Reese joins a group of weary GIs unexpectedly ordered back into the line when on their way to a rest area. While most of the men withdraw from their positions facing a German pillbox at the far side of a mine-field, half a dozen men are left to protect a wide front. By various ruses, they manage to convince the Germans that a large force is still holding the position. Then Reese leads two of the men in an unauthorized and unsuccessful attack on the pillbox, in which the other two are killed; and when the main platoon returns, he is threatened with court-martial. Rather that face the disgrace, and in an attempt to show he was right, he makes a one-man attack on the pillbox.

Feature film debut of Bob Newhart.

Bob Newhart said in an interview that due to the film’s ballooning budget, Paramount Studios refused to provide more film stock to the set. The production ran out of film stock before filming the scripted finale, but the abrupt ending has helped the film gain a cult audience.

During production a number of actors, including Steve McQueen and Fess Parker, frequently arrived on set late and shot a number of scenes with little or no rehearsal and without make-up. Apparently they were working on other film projects at the same time they were shooting this one.

Director Don Siegel did not want to shoot the scene where Bob Newhart’s character has a fake telephone conversation with ”headquarters” to fool the Germans listening through a microphone planted in the US bunker, believing that it had no place in the story. He was overruled by the studio, however. Newhart at the time was a hugely popular stand-up comic, and a major part of his act was having one-sided phone conversations. The studio ordered that the scene be shot in order to capitalize on Newhart’s popularity. Newhart wrote his own lines for this scene.

In his autobiography, ”I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This”, Bob Newhart said that he was offered increasingly large fees for nightclub appearances during production, much higher than the salary he was getting for this film. He really wanted to get back on the road, and would routinely go to director Don Siegel with ideas on how his character could be killed off. Siegel would respond, ”You’re in it to the end, soldier.”

According to Bob Newhart’s autobiography, ”I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This”, Steve McQueen and Bobby Darin did not get along during filming. When stories of their feud appeared in the trade papers, the film’s publicist was fired. As it turned out, it was Nick Adams who leaked the story. According to Newhart, Adams felt so bad that he chased the publicist’s departing plane yelling, ”I’m sorry!”

Many of the cast were angry over the studio’s budget restrictions, which resulted in phony looking props, malfunctioning firearms and the same German having to be killed three or four times. In the last battle scene, Steve McQueen can be seen experiencing multiple failures firing the M3 Grease Gun. These malfunctions were due to problems with the blanks used.

1962

997360355300

Movie

2018-02-07 21:32:49

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2018-02-07 21:32:49