Baron of Arizona, Fuller mounted The Steel Helmet as an ambitious B. His star, Gene Evans, was an unknown and was supported entirely by no-name character actors. Without the money to film in any location resembling Korea, Fuller shot the majority of the movie in a rented studio, utilizing two sets (a forest and a Buddhist temple) and adding material from one to two days of outdoor work in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. The battle scenes consist of stock war footage intercut with shots of UCLA students dressed up as North Korean soldiers. Despite lacking anything resembling naturalistic mise-en-scene, The Steel Helmet nevertheless exudes authenticity due to Fuller’s blunt, unsparing handling of the subject matter. Fuller knew full well the limitations inherent in depicting war on celluloid but was determined to convey the details of a footsoldier’s life and the emotions of war as accurately as possible. As presented in the film, war is not noble or glorious but simply fatigue interrupted by death.
Fuller’s approach to the combat film genre was very much a personal one, and he often drew the characters and situations in his war pictures directly from who he knew and what he saw during his time as a soldier. Having spent over fifteen years in journalism by the time he enlisted, Fuller seems to have approached his war service as an opportunity to gather really good copy. Although he was offered numerous opportunities to escape combat, Fuller wanted to be where the action was, on the ground with the “doggies,” and he sought an assignment with the infantry.26 He carried with him a diary that functioned much like a reporter’s notebook, with descriptions of military activities, living conditions, casualties, and vacation leaves, including instructions for how real-life situations might be incorporated into future stories. When it came time to write The Steel Helmet, Fuller’s own war experiences colored his interpretation of combat film conventions, resulting in a picture that invites us not to identify with recognizable Americans fighting for a valiant cause, but to share in the feeling of what it is like to be a foot-soldier. When the seemingly harmless can turn deadly and a sniper waits around every corner, fear, confusion, and exhaustion reign supreme.
The Steel Helmet first introduces us to Sergeant Zack (Evans), a self-absorbed WWII retread who is rescued by a South Korean orphan (William Chun) after surviving a massacre. Initially hostile to the child’s friendly advances, Zack bows to his persistence and allows him to follow behind, giving him the nickname Short Round (“cause you’re not going all the way”). Zack’s emotional detachment protects him from the horrors of war, but he slowly starts to let his guard down and develops a fondness for Short Round. The two eventually meet up with an African-American medic, Corporal Thompson (James Edwards), and a lost patrol. Led by battle-inexperienced Lieutenant Driscoll (Steve Brodie), the patrol is made up of a strikingly oddball version of the generic “mixed platoon,” including Sergeant Tanaka (Richard Loo), a second-generation Japanese-American; Bronte (Robert Hutton), who carries the hand organ of a dead priest; Baldy (Richard Monahan), a hairless radio man; Joe (Sid Melton), who manages the pack mules and doesn’t speak; and a nameless soldier who will soon be blown away (Fuller regular Neyle Morrow). Zack quickly sizes each of them up, defining their competence as soldiers according to their service during WWII: while Tanaka and Thompson saw combat, Driscoll was stationed stateside and Bronte was a conscientious objector. The bedraggled group footslog through the jungle to a Buddhist temple, where Joe is killed by a North Korean major (Harold Fong) whom the remainder capture as a POW. While the others rest, the North Korean questions first Thompson and then Tanaka regarding their loyalty to a country that doesn’t embrace them as equals. Zack snaps when a sniper kills Short Round, turning on the sneering POW and fatally shooting him. During an intense North Korean assault on the temple, Driscoll and Bronte prove themselves in battle and are killed, and Zack breaks down. Only Tanaka, Thompson, Baldy, and a dazed Zack walk out of the temple when reinforcements arrive.
The overarching story of The Steel Helmet, the title, and many of the incidents that occur in the film originated in Fuller’s war diaries. On September 11, 1943, he wrote about what will become the first and last shots of The Steel Helmet:
Fighting in Sicily strictly an inf. war. Up & down mountains, across ravines & draws, over terrain which could be negotiated only on foot. Emphasize this in story with dedication ‘to the United States infantry.’ Show them on footslog—just a patrol for opening and end same way.27
Sergeant Zack began in Fuller’s notebook as a battle-hardened veteran who hooks up with an untested patrol to capture a German operative in a monastery; when the Korean conflict broke out in 1950, Fuller quickly adapted the old plot to the new war. The title of the film came directly from another diary entry: “Everybody wants helmet with bullet hole in it for luck. Finke tells me get my own bullet hole in helmet.”28 Even one of the film’s most shocking incidents was drawn from real life. Next to a diary entry, “Doggie booby trapped. W. killed examining him,” is the reminder: “Remember inc. this in Finke story. Found dead American—warned—but goddam green doggie went for dog tags and blown up—body booby trapped. Use this stupid character in ‘Steel Helmet’ story to show what not to do.”29 As recorded in his diary, Fuller’s war experiences served as a primer for the writing of his combat pictures, providing lessons in how to survive and reminders of the physical and psychological toll taken on those who do.
When sitting down to write The Steel Helmet, Fuller grafted his own war experiences onto a generic foundation provided by the WWII combat film, participating in a redirection of the genre toward darker themes. The opening dedication (“This story is dedicated to the U.S. Infantry”); gruff, experienced sergeant; scruffy, “mixed background” platoon; group on patrol; and defense of an outpost found in The Steel Helmet are all standard-issue elements in WWII combat films, as well as in later Korean War pictures.30 By drawing on a set of characters and situations that were familiar to viewers, Fuller spared himself from having to provide detailed backstories and exposition, allowing him to focus more on the soldiers’ routines and the effects of war than on how they got there and where they were going. The film’s generic signposts also help to make otherwise implausible events that are not causally motivated appear more realistic to viewers.31 Within the context of the genre, then, Zack’s miraculous survival of the unseen massacre, his discovery by Short Round and their discovery of the medic, the lost patrol, and the lone Communist North Korean hiding in the temple all seem reasonable or likely, even though highly coincidental, as these are story elements that viewers recognize from previous combat pictures. The combat film genre thus provides Fuller not only with a broad outline of appropriate characters and situations, but also with a means of making the episodic events in the film appear unified and realistic.
The Steel Helmet takes the combat film in a new direction, however, as Fuller tweaks some conventions, abandons others, and forces the viewer to consider unpleasant truths. Apart from the retread sergeant, the film’s protagonists are a bizarre collection of colorful characters atypical of the genre. It’s as if Fuller said, “You want a cross representation of America? I’ll show you America!” In place of the Italian from Brooklyn and the farm boy from Nebraska so often seen in earlier combat films, the “all-American” platoon of The Steel Helmet contains a silent mule herder and a bald man who rubs dirt on his head, both of whom provide strange scenes of comic relief. Also on the journey are an African-American and a Nisei, neither of whom would have shared a foxhole with Sergeant Zack in a WWII combat picture; along with the conscientious objector, these characters enable Fuller to address the paradoxes inherent in the choice to fight for one’s country. While the white soldier, Bronte, refused to fight in the last war, Tanaka and Thompson served their country, even though their country didn’t consider them as equals at the time. Even the platoon’s lieutenant defies convention. Rather than being presented as an experienced leader whom the men trust, Zack and several North Korean snipers discredit Driscoll almost as soon as he is introduced, elevating combat readiness over rank in the estimation of a soldier’s worth. While Driscoll redeems himself at the end of the picture, the scenario of enlisted men saddled with a green lieutenant highlights the need of soldiers to rely on themselves rather than on their officers, an emerging theme of the combat film genre that becomes particularly prominent in movies about the Vietnam War.
Fuller’s
