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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $59.98
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• See each disc below for specifics.
I think the biggest concern I had going into reviewing this boxset is that somewhere around the fourth movie in the set, my eyes would begin to glaze over as our enemies were referred to as “Japs” for approximately the 40,069th time. Luckily, this box set dodges the bullet of being the same thing six times over by including some work set during WWII but not made during it (an incredibly important distinction to get textured or interesting films about the time period in most cases) and also helps its case by having two genuinely great movies accompanied by three pretty good ones (also one shitbrick). By combining three movies made in the 60’s with three movies made during the 40’s you get a fascinating look at the evolution of viewpoints of war from an age of propaganda and pro-war posturing in the cinema to a more disillusioned and even-handed account of the cost of battle.
The Hill
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RATED: NOT RATED
RUNNING TIME: 123 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Vintage Featurette: The Sun…The Sand…The Hill
• 1965 War Movies Trailer Gallery
The Pitch
Come on. You’ve got Connery (never better), Lumet (firing on all cylinders) and a big fucking hill. You want to see this.
The Humans
Sean Connery, Ossie Davis, Roy Kinnear, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews
The Nutshell
The most tangentially related to WWII of all of the films, The Hill takes place inside a military prison where the means of punishment is reps up and down the titular hill, a man-made monstrosity that sits in the middle of the compound. When a prisoner unexpectedly dies after a particularly arduous session of Hill’n it, some of the prisoners band together and try to convince other high-ranking officials in the compound to hold the guilty party responsible for their actions.
The aforementioned big fucking hill.
The Lowdown
Now this movie is the fucking goods. This is a gritty little movie that absolutely blindsided me. In the midst of a boxset called “Heroes Fight for Freedom”, a movie that examines the corruption of authority in an army prison where the prisoners are forced to run up and down a giant man-made hill for any wrongdoings is just about the last thing you’d expect to stumble upon. But here it is, a movie that I feel pretty comfortable in deeming a masterpiece from Sidney Lumet.
You can really feel the oppressive heat coming off the screen here, as the dirt-cake faces and chapped lips of the characters tells the whole story of their surroundings. The unbroken takes of men running back and forth up and down The Hill is really something, effectively conveying the exhaustion one can look forward to in this prison while at the same time being visceral and exciting for the audience to take in. I’ve never seen Connery this good (and now retroactively wish he made twenty more collabos with Lumet, if these could be the expected results) and all of the supporting actors (Ossie Davis and Ian Hendry are particularly good) are on top of their game, resulting in a cast that doesn’t falter from top to bottom.
"Did someone order some Hot Cops?"
The movie is intense as they come, and is more white-knuckle than any other film in the set, without there actually being a single gun fired. It’s a brilliant psychological examination on the levels of power with regards to corruption with perfect camerawork to literally push the issue right into the viewer’s face. The camera is constantly working in closeup whenever it’s not pulling back to show a bit of scope or to hammer home the physical reality of what the actors are doing on screen, and the effect is stiflingly intense to watch. Its conclusion is pitch perfect and feels rather timely to me in an age where supporting the torture of detained human beings is used as a line to pop the crowd during political debates. The end product is something like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest told with the psychological intensity (and claustrophobic sense) of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. An absolutely fantastic film that I’d highly recommend checking out even outside of this box set.
The Package
The cover art’s a bit goofy, but the tagline sort of lets you in on the ruminations being made in the film. Gorgeous transfer of a movie where you really need to clearly see the faces of these men in close-up to get the full experience and intent Lumet was intending with his setting and camerawork. Included is a little featurette about the making of The Hill and its subsequent screening at Cannes (which let me in on the little tidbit that people died of heat exhaustion on the set, which is treated casually as inevitable in a throwaway narration line) as well as a batch of 1965 war movie trailers.
36 Hours
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RATED: PG
RUNNING TIME: 115 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Available Subtitles: English, French
• Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• James Garner war movies trailer gallery
The Pitch
“It’s like 48 Hours – 12 + Nazis.”
The Humans
James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor
The Nutshell
Maj. Jefferson Pike’s (Garner) last memory is leaving a bar just a few days prior to D-Day and the storming of Normandy. He is one of the few officers with the knowledge that this is the area that Allied forces will be attacking, and for this he is drugged and captured. He wakes up in an Allied hospital to find that it’s 1950 and he’s suffering from retrograde amnesia. Only, the truth is it’s 1946 and this Allied hospital is just a Nazi front put up in order to coax the D-Day information out of Pike. What follows is a cat and mouse game involving a concentration camp survivor looking for her own way out (Saint) and the Nazis who would love nothing more than to thwart the D-Day operation before it’s too late.
"Thirty thousand bucks and all I get is the James Garner channel in HD."
The Lowdown
What I find most interesting about this movie (which is a pretty potent thriller with a solid high concept backing it up) is the fact that they’re desperately trying to complicate commonly held assumptions about ‘good’ and ‘bad’, but they add so many caveats to this notion that it almost renders it completely obsolete. By having one of the sympathetic characters as an officer in the Nazi army, you’re clearly aiming to show that there are shades of grey in any situation. However, when you preface this character by making him a former inhabitant of America who is more interested in his experiment with regards to healing the psychologically wounded (a selfless trait that is so American, at least in the context of this movie) who is compassionate toward his captors and appreciates their ingenuity that shade of grey is looking more and more like the color black from where I’m standing. However, the Eva Marie Saint character and her explanation of why she’s aiding the Nazis in this charade are a more effective way of showing the complexity they’re trying to put forth.
Eva’s hijinx on set made it hard for the actors to focus.
The movie works pretty well for the most part, and even though I feel the film could use a solid twenty minutes trimmed from the runtime to make it purr (I felt the ending portion dragged a bit in particular, but it also introduces my favorite character in the entire film, so I can accept it for what it is) I’d recommend it for it’s confused stance of ambiguity housed within a reasonably good thriller. Again, this is a film that isn’t exactly filled with huge action setpieces, it’s more along the lines of a psychological chess game between Garner’s character and his Nazi captors. It’s also interesting to note that the Nazi bureaucracy as portrayed in this film seems strikingly relevant today, with their policy of saving their own ass, even in the face of facts. They are more interested in personal gain and movement up the food chain of authority instead of producing actual results and trying to gain ground. An interesting picture worth checking out for some solid performances from its leads and a solid hook of a concept, despite some little stumbles here and there.
The Package
The cover art is as good as a cover involving a gigantic tree and James Garner ever will be, I guess. Although it does a pretty poor job of selling the film’s concept (in fact, it doesn’t at all). Unfortunately, this transfer looks a bit like ass with numerous instances of unintentional blurred imagery. It’s not detrimental to the point of annoyance, but when one sees the other transfers from films decades earlier in the set sparkling it seems unnecessary. The only extras on this disc are a few trailers for James Garner war movies (Americanization of Emily, etc.).
Hell to Eternity
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RATED: NOT RATED
RUNNING TIME: 132 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• 1960s War Movies Trailer Gallery
The Pitch
A B-Movie aesthetic with scope and a little more complexity than your standard World War II picture.
The Humans
Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen, Vic Damone, Patricia Owens
"The world’s largest game of Seven Up starts…now."
The Nutshell
Guy Gabaldon loses his mother at a young age and is adopted by a Japanese-American family whom he’s close to who raise him for the majority of his young life into adulthood. However, Pearl Harbor hits and suddenly his family is being drawn off into internment camps with him left behind to reconcile his heritage/upbringing with his desire to protect and serve his own country. What follows is examination of the true costs of war and how a man can lose his identity in the violence that ensues.
The picture doesn’t make much sense until you realize her house is made of dicks.
The Lowdown
There’s some genuine virtuosity (of the non-Denzel variety) on display here: in fact the edit from their final night of shore leave into the battle itself and the scenes that take place before and after are some of the best stuff in the entire box set. The film is deceptive, starting as a rather plain family drama examining the life of real-life war hero Guy Gabaldon, who was brought into and raised by a Japanese-American family after his mother passed away. I feel the film lets the government off the hook far too easily for the Japanese internment camps, with one of the characters using the awful line of “Hey, nobody can bat 1.000”. Yes, let’s compare the imprisonment of an entire ethnicity of human beings, purely for reactionary purposes to a 4-3 routine groundball. However, that’s really the only major gripe about the treatment of war I can find within this story. It’s really at its most effective when it’s letting loose some B-movie flavor in those scenes I mentioned above, but it also works quite well at showing the emotional and psychological ramifications of battle when you’re killing people who look like your family. There’s senselessness to the violence of this movie that plays to its B-movie strengths that at the same time helps drive home the precarious ledge Guy Gabaldon’s psyche is teetering on. Worth checking out for visual chops on display by director Phil Karlson despite its lukewarm first act.
There wasn’t much the family could do when Reggie went into one of his fits of Rocky Balboa posing.
The Package
The cover actually conveys my feelings about the movie pretty well showcasing its hardboiled nature (THE GUTS! GLORY!) with the war/sex double feature even carrying over onto the cover art. The transfer is one of the better in the box set, but all you get for extras is a handful of 1960s war movie trailers. Hardly inspiring, but I would also doubt at the same time that a wealth of bonus material would exist given the fact that I never had heard of this picture or most of those involved until I happened upon it now.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
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RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 138 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Academy-Award Nominated Pete Smith Specialty Short Movie Pests
• Vintage Passing Parade Short A Lady Fights Back
• Classic Cartoon Bear Raid Warden
• Theatrical Trailer
The pitch
“Enjoy two and a half hours of mediocrity.”
The Humans
Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy
"It’s standard operating procedure for us to check for the Tingler on any of the boys returning from overseas."
The Nutshell
Lt. Ted Lawson (Johnson) agrees to a secret mission that will pull him from his fiancée for months that actually turns out to be the famous ‘Doolittle Raids’ over Japan in World War II. The movie is a pretty by-the-numbers description of their preparation and the fight to get back home after their plane crashed post-bombing. I’d go into more detail, but no.
Much like the Nike-Swoosh-in-Sideburn, the Planestache is now only a forgotten relic of the past.
The Lowdown
Overall, the weakest entry in the box set, and also the longest. It’s telling a pretty epic tale detailing the training, execution and aftermath of the bombing of Tokyo by Air Force pilots, but it lacks any intensity whatsoever and had me pining to read a book about the situation rather than continue to be subjected to the rote display of the trauma of war on screen.
I’ve liked Van Johnson in other roles (in this set, he’s quite good in Command Decision), but this part requires a bit more heavy lifting than it seems Johnson was capable of doing. There’s a level of suffering that I just don’t buy into from his character, and the romance between him and his wife is downright annoying, although interesting: They are a genuinely vacuous couple; her worried with him not liking her anymore because she’s a few months pregnant, him worried she won’t like him anymore because he’s missing a fucking leg. As a viewer you just cease to give a shit when worries like that are put on screen in a wartime epic and are meant to court your sympathy. It’s just an overlong bit of melodrama where you don’t actually feel the intensity of the situation (mostly because of the acting and pedestrian direction, also because it’s not brilliant writing either – basically what I’m saying is this film doesn’t have a hell of a lot going for it). Spencer Tracy gets top billing as General Doolittle and plays the part like a grandpa you see every couple of years who tells you how proud he is of you only to disappear until a birthday in the next decade. It’s the most disposable of all of the films in the set and exemplifies to a T what I feared would make up the majority of the box set. Entirely avoidable.
The first time, it came as a surprise. But this time George was ready. He threw on a life preserver and poncho and stood directly in defiance of Bumblebee’s piss-stream.
The Package
The cover is delightfully misleading, as your lead is Mr. Johnson and he’s sandwiched between two men who comprise perhaps 3% of the film’s running time otherwise. Mitchum is seen sparsely and Tracy’s character seems to be put front and center more because he’s playing James Doolittle than because he actually does anything of worth in the picture. There’s an amusing short about annoying theater patrons in Movie Pests (I think the modern iteration would consist of an Irreversible homage in which a man is beaten to death outside of a nightclub, and then we flashback to see that he didn’t turn his cell phone off during the picture), a less entertaining A Lady Fights Back short, and the reasonably entertaining cartoon Bear Raid Warden. Also comes with a theatrical trailer (I love how every movie of this era pimped itself as being “THE MOST STAR STUDDED AMAZING SPECTACLE EVER OF ALL TIME THAT WILL CAUSE YOU TOHT-ESQUE FACE MELT IF YOU DARE TO AVERT YOUR EYES!”) The transfer is one of the better ones on the disc, although I wish whatever means were used to spruce it up were utilized on the other pictures in the set instead.
The years of relentless tugging finally found Stretch Armstrong holed up in an assisted living facility.
Command Decision.jpg)
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RATED: NOT RATED
RUNNING TIME: 111 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Vintage Passing Parade Short Souvenirs of Death
• Classic Cartoon King-Size Canary
• Theatrical Trailer
The Pitch
Watch a debate over the value of human life that is guaranteed to never have entered the minds of our current administration!
The Humans
Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford, John Hodiak, Edward Arnold
The Nutshell
An insider look at the tough choices that must be made by generals with the lives of thousands in their hands and the objectives that have to be carried out in order for the battle to be won. The army has obtained information showcasing that the Nazis are creating a secret weapon that will blow the Allied forces out of the skies in a matter of weeks – jet fighters. In order to eliminate these weapons from the battle plan, General K.C. Dennis (Gable) must risk the lives of thousands of fighter pilots to find the factories where this weaponry is being built and destroy them. The film that follows is a debate of the merits of losing scads of American life to achieve a nebulous goal that is known only to a select few in the Army.
"I remember when art was a painting of a sunset or a sculpture of a magnificent body. Nowadays, someone projectile shits on a map, calls it "operation enduring freedom" and I get to pay twenty bucks for the privilege of looking at it. The world certainly has changed."
The Lowdown
I’m a sucker for plays adapted for the screen for whatever reason (perhaps it lends the concepts a dimensionality and depth that I don’t get from watching them performer live, even though they make lack the vitality of said live performance? YOU BE THE JUDGE), and this is no exception. The action at times can feel a little bit, well, stagey with characters standing in one place debating the merits of sending off scads of men to die for a somewhat nebulous purpose. However, there’s a couple of cinematic sequences that help the film to come alive (one in particular is a nice little potboiler where Gable’s character instructs a plane being piloted by a bombardier whose pilot is wounded as to how to safely land a plane) and stop torpor from taking over as men stand around and talk emphatically.
Sometimes after the long sessions of massaging Don’s Knotts, little Ronnie Howard just wanted to end it all.
It’s a worthwhile part of the costs of war to display on film, as there’s definitely a theatrical quality to be mined from men debating the deployment of thousands of soldiers who will assuredly die carrying out the task. Gable has a good time chewing the scenery and is the performance to be savored the most out of everyone in the film (though Van Johnson does much better in his supporting performance peppered with comedic relief in this picture than the vapid Thirty Seconds), but it isn’t appointment viewing. It’s a decent examination of an oft-ignored part of the battle plan, outside of where the action really is, and has some solid performances to buoy the film past its point-and-shoot stage direction.
The general used the same intensity he brought to the table for delivering inspirational speeches when ordering a pizza.
The Package
The cover is actually emblematic of the idea of the movie (staying on the ground with the decision-makers as the battles take place overhead/off-camera) and is taken from my favorite scene in the movie. So double bonus points there. The short accompanying this disc, Souvenirs of Death, is actually my favorite superfluous short out of all the discs in this set. It’s a ridiculous examination of a gun’s (narrated by the gun itself) life from the fields of war to the hands of a mobster. Delightfully retarded. Also included is the cartoon short King-Size Canary (pretty damned fun) and the theatrical trailer (letting me know this is another in a long line of the MOST AMAZING CASTS EVER ASSEMBLED IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA OH MY GOD I THINK A LITTLE PRECUM JUST FOUND ITS WAY OUT).
Surprisingly, Disney’s "Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End AIDS-dipped Scythes" didn’t make the list.
Air Force.jpg)
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RATED: NOT RATED
RUNNING TIME: 124 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Oscar-Nominated Technicolor Drama Short Women at War
• Classic Cartoons The Fifth-Column Mouse and Scrap Happy Daffy
• Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Adaptation with George Raft and Harry Carey
• Theatrical Trailer
The Pitch
It’s Hawks. Fucking watch it.
The Humans
John Garfield, Gig Young, Harry Carey, George Tobias
The Nutshell
It’s standard Hawks on display here: a group of men, in the face of completely overwhelming odds, join together and perform their duty (not heroic to them, just their job), but in this case it’s set on the fields of war and has a strong propaganda bent.
The Lowdown
If every propaganda film was as fantastic as this, we’d probably never go wanting for recruits into the armed forces. It’s absolutely fantastic as a Hawks (my favorite director, along with Lubitsch) picture: crisp, energetic action sequences with some goods bits of humor and men standing up in the face of unbeatable odds to perform their duty. However, there’s some truly repugnant anti-Japanese sentiment that’s completely understandable given the context in which this film was made, but abhorrent nonetheless.
X Games: Paintball was taking it a little too far for some.
All of the performances of the leads are solid and help pull you into the situation these pilots are getting themselves into and it’s standard inspiration for those American citizens who are being asked to still support the war as it begins to wear on the collective psyche of the nation. I’m glad I watched the picture and it’s a great example of the American WWII propaganda machine working at full blast, but it’s a good thing Hawks’ oeuvre doesn’t contain more of this type of film, because it would be exhausting to a certain point. The movie’s also notable for having an ending where we watch, for literally ten minutes, the enemy being shanghaied by American troops who sneak up on them. It’s the logical ending for a picture of this nature, but it’s completely numbing by minute four and then it proceeds to continue FOREVER. Again, you’ll be completely enraptured by the filmmaking on display (great great great action sequences to be had here) but you’ll feel a little woozy about it afterwards. Definitely recommended.
The Package
Probably the best cover out of all of the DVD’s, managing to strike the patriotic tone with its “best of” stills that wrap around the title. The transfer is bitchin’ as is the audio, and it’s the most stacked of all of the discs (although that isn’t saying much). You get the short Women at War, cartoons The Fifth-Column Mouse and Scrap Happy Daffy as well as the radio adaptation of Air Force. All of these are pretty entertaining diversions, and you also get the theatrical trailer (posterity!). This along with The Hill is the most valuable discs out of the set, so I’m appreciative of the TLC shown to this disc in particular.
"Alright, the first official meeting of the Frank Booth fanclub is now in session!"
There’s a lot of good to be had in this set, with two great films, three good ones, and only one miss. Each film comes equipped with a little in the way of extras and none of the discs are what you’d call jam-packed with extras, but the films themselves are the real draw for the most part. Definitely worth checking out for those who love Hawks or Lumet (which you fucking should) or are interested in films made in that era or made that depict that era.
OVERALL: 8.5 out of 10