Film Forno

Richard Widmark, the blonde, cool killer has died. He was the quintessential film noir protagonist, running down a dark street at night, chasing or being chased. His career really blasted into orbit with Kiss Of Death, a 1947 (that magical year!) noir directed by that talented curmudgeon Henry Hathaway. The story goes that Hathaway didn’t want Widmark for the role of Tommy Udo, sociopath killer with a snickering laugh, but Big Boss Darryl Zanuck overrode Hathaway’s objections and Widmark got the part. A pissed off Hathaway made it tough on Widmark and messed with him every chance he got. But so what, once Tommy Udo pushed a crippled old lady down a flight of apartment house stairs in her wheelchair, Widmark ascended to the stellar firmament atop a hugh geyser of pop culture appeal! Instant Stardom!

Tommy Udo’s Push To Stardom

He later appeared in some more classic Noir’s like Sam Fuller’s Pickup On South Street, a no holds barred tale of a sleazy pickpocket, Commies after Atomic secrets, floozies, patriotism, Thelma Ritter, murder, and an apartment on a barge in the East River! Check this one out for yourself!

Also one of my favorite’s Jules Dassin’s Night And The City, a down and dirty tale of a two-bit hustler turned wrestling promoter in London. (Dassin was fleeing the Commie Witch Hunt Trials and had to make films in Europe) This film features some of the best B+W noir Cinematography of all time! It is a pleasure to look at, you can get drunk, revelling in all that silver nitrate!

They are showing this masterpiece at the American Cinematheque as part of their upcoming Noir City film festival. Be sure to make it if you can! This is an incredible film, it unspools April 24th at 7:30 pm. I will be there, drinking a glass of Nebbiolo, toasting that gone blonde genius of darkness, Richard Widmark. May you never be chased down a dark alley in Film Heaven.

Night And The City trailer

Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln in Nothing But A Man

Ivan Dixon, star of Nothing But A Man and director of The Spook Who Sat By The Door has checked out. Most people probably know him from his role on that idiotic show Hogan’s Heroes. He quit that gig after 5 years, I guess he couldn’t take it any more. than he got into directing. He acted in a ton of cool TV shows, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, The Man Fron U.N.C.L.E., etc., etc.. He also directed a whole bunch of T.V shows, he was a ground breaking Black TV director, opening the door for a lot of people.Bill Cosby gave him his directing break, they had acted together in I Spy. But I think to Mr. Dixon, his biggest accomplishments were acting in Nothing But A Man, a film that told it like it was about being Black in America, and directing The Spook Who Sat By The Door, a hard to see film about a Black C.I.A. operative who uses his knowledge to train Black militants in a plot to overthrow the government.

Luckily for me Jerry’s Video Reruns had a copy but now they’re out of business. Check it out if you can find it. Here’s the trailer

p.s. As an added bonus we get trailer narration by the legendary Adolph Caesar, check him out in A Soldier’s Story.

What a great movie! I just saw it on TCM for the first time in many moons. Last time I saw The Hidden Fortress was at the Film Forum in NYC. This film works on many levels, Toshiro Mifune is as always, great, a super star of the silver screen! One of the greatest film actors of all time.

Toshiro In Trouble

Kurosawa is at the top of his game, emotion comes pouring off the screen in powerful and subtle ways. This film is an amazing amalgam of formal and spontaneous aesthetics, Japanese formal composition, the Princess in her court, and then the action of hiding out with the two peasants, it inspires deep feelings of loyalty, patriotism, friendship. Do these feelings exist, are they in our lives, I mean really, are they concrete parts of our existence or merely vaporous thoughts that disappear between your fingers like disapating smoke when you try to grasp them. When was the last time you had to defend your Princess against an army of killers?

Spunky Princess
Yet we all have instilled in us from birth, ideals that stongly influence us, our morality, our decision making, our life. Films like this one exercise our moral self and that is what gives them their power. Sacraficing one’s self to a higher cause, it’s not something we’re called upon to do often or ever. But would you? This is a basic question of human existence, of civilization, and it is beautifully expressed in The Hidden Fortress. Also the two peasants that exhibit all the human failings and foilbles, they’re greedy, lustful, envious, you name it, and they’re funny. By coincidence I happened to see Robert Altman’s Gossford Park recently. A great film that deals with the juxtaposition of the serving class and the ruling class at a mansion in the countrty. There is a whole tradition of servant/ master drama and comedy that both of these films are a part of. But Hidden Fortress also works purely as an Adventure story and a Spectacle. It’s a magnificent film, maybe my favorite Kurosawa film. As everyone by now probably knows Star Wars bears a striking resemblence to this film, the peasants are replaced by bickering robots, there’s a feisty Princess and some Heroes to save her.

Ultra Cool Bad Guy!
Star Wars is populated with a lot of characters that you can sell as action figures and toys but the basic plot is the same. I think Lucas has acknowledged this, he did an introduction to the Criterion DVD release but I haven’t seen it. Sergio Leone remarked in the press that he saw Yojimbo and was inspired to make A Fistfull Of Dollars. Kurosawa sued and won the rights to that film for Japan. Leone pointed out that that plot device was used by Dashiell Hammett in The Glass Key but to no avail, he had to pay up. I guess Lucas was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, at least while Kurosawa was still alive. But I think The Hidden Fortressis a vastly superior film to Star Wars. I wonder if Kurosawa ever read any Joseph Campbell?

Lucas, you owe me big time!

I just watched Umberto Lenzi’s Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere AKA Dirty Pictures or the english title I prefer Oasis Of Fear. This is a great film! The cast is superb, Ray Lovelock, in perhaps his greatest role, Ornella Muti, so young, so beautiful, so innocent and so sexy, Irene Papas, so dark, so severe, so attractive, like a sexy Greek witch.

This movie is a little like Hansel and Gretel with a sexy witch enticing our two innocent children into her gingerbread house, although the house isn’t made of gingerbread, candy canes, gumdrops, spun sugar. It’s made of champagne, caviar, exotic, erotic clothes, cigarettes, psychedelic music, and sex. Our story begins in Denmark where our two hippie love children are on holiday. They see the sights, run around Copenhagen and cavort like extras in a Dava Clark Five movie. But suddenly the Italian genre sensibility kicks in. They go into a Sex Shoppe, buy a ton of porno mags and bring them back to Italy to sell so they can pay for their vacation.

This works out great, they’re rich, they live like hippie Gods in Italy, eating at fancy restaurants, feeding champagne to cats, releasing doves at stuffy establishments, dancing at psychedelic discos, just having fun. There’s a scene that I find fascinating. At one point Ray sells a 45 record of people having sex to a foppish rich guy on a yacht.

Is That Moana Climax and the Heavy Breathers?

I’ve heard of “porno records” but I’ve never seen one. Frank Zappa was once busted for producing a “pornographic recording” and selling it to an undercover cop. Did people actually sit around at a stag party and listen to a record of people having sex? I heard Mickey Cohen bugged Johnny Stompanto’s bedroom and recorded Johnny and Lana Turner going at it.

You wanna go listen to a record?
Johnny Stomp
Oooooh Johnny, You Bug Me!
The Mickster made a ton of money selling pressings to Hollywood hipsters to play at Tinseltown shindigs. But back to Oasis of Fear, our two heroic hippies run out of cash and decide to produce their own dirty pictures starring themselves,

they do but they get busted in Pisa trying to sell their wares and are told to leave the country,
Is that the leaning tower of Pisa or are you just happy to see me?

they hit the road in their old MG and run out of gas out in the country. They spy the beautiful estate of the wicked witch and push their car in hoping to get some gas.

At first Ms. Pappas tries to run them off, but then mysteriously she switches gears and invites them in. She offers them refreshments of all sorts, access to her copious closets of exotic outfits. Ornella dons an Eastern sari, she looks incredible, a vision from the Orient and she dances to a sitar record like a shimmering jewel.

at one point Irene looks at her through a cut crystal goblet and we get a telidoscopic view of Ornella’s bare breasts spinning psychedelically before our eyes.


A bare chested Ray assumes various Yogic poses at the command of Ms. Muti, The Lion, The Cobra, ” We are each other’s total slaves” he says to a bemused Irene.


A heady brew of sexual intrigue is bubbling furiously on the stove when murder and treachery rear their ugly heads. I’m not going to reveal what happens, YOU must seek out this film to find out for yourself. One of the aspects of this film I find so appealing is the summoning up of a bygone time. The 60’s, the Age Of Aquarius, the Innocence of these two young beautiful people perfectly captures that time and let’s us re-expieience it, like a fly in amber or Ruth Gordon’s scent collection in Harold and Maude. There is a dance scene with a rock band playing and our heroes frugging and watusiying their hearts out. It captures the energy of that time perfectly.


You can feel what it was like to be alive then. To feel like the world was yours, sex and music were a magic carpet to fly you around the globe.


This is the birthright of every person, an ideal we’ve lost touch with today. This is one reson why films like this are important. They’re the Dead Sea Scrolls of the hippie era. We can all learn a lot about the Spirit of that Age. This is also a reason why I feel Lenzi is a great filmmaker. His film resonates with truth, true senasations, what a real person would feel, not some corporate crap selected by a demographic computer print out. There’s a dance scene in Mike Hodges’ great Get Carter that rings true with the same soul transporting realism. He also is a great filmmaker and you can tell from details like this. But for me the stars of this film are the stars. Lovelock and Muti are so captivating, so charming, you really care about them. And Irene Pappas is so evil, she’s great! The score is by Bruno Lauzi, a pop star singer. It’s great, melodic, moody, jazzy. Even the pop song that’s used in the film is excellent. It works , it’s got a hook, it grabs you and you dig it. I think the Marc 4 played on this song because the bassline is so ass kickingly funky and hip, it must be the incomparable Maurizio Maiorana.

Looky here I just found the opening credits on YouTube!

Barry Morse in Action! Getting Choked in a Dungeon!

Barry Morse the great actor who portrayed the personification of the term “relentless pursuer” is dead. His Lt. Philip Gerard goes down with Captain Bligh as one of the most brutal unbending authority figures of all time. I watched The Fugitive when it first ran on TV. I was a young lad at the time. It was one of the shows that made the transition from B+W to color. So you’d hear William Conrad’s stentorian voice announce “The Fugitive, In Color!” and it would say In Color on the screen as well. I guess just in case you had a B+W TV and were deaf, they wanted to let you know what you were missing. There was such a mania about this show that when the final episode was to be aired, all these rumors swept the country. I remember my neighbors telling me they had a cousin who knew somebody that worked for ABC and they found out what was going to happen. Of course they were wrong. That episode was one of the most watched programs ever broadcast. I still remeber at the end of the final show, Dr. Richard Kimball, now cleared of murder charges. is approached by Lt. Gerard outside the courthouse. He offers his hand to the recently vindicated physician, Dr. Kimball refuses to shake it. David Janssen was like Jesus Christ walking the land spreading wisdom and helping people, all the while pursued by the evil, officious Lt. Gerard. Check out Morse’s resume, he worked on all the early classic dramatic TV shows, Playhouse 90, East Side West Side, Naked City, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits. What a great time to be an actor for Television! Once during the original run of the show, my friend and I threw some snowballs at a passing bus. To our surprise it stopped and a guy got off. He looked just like Lt. Philip Gerard! He started chasing us! We got away finally but we were freaked out! Fare Thee well Barry Morse, your relentless pursuits are over except on reruns and DVD.

Lt. Gerard, Dr. Richard Kimball. The One-Armed Man with an Emmy

I went to see the new Rambo movie. It was pretty good! Stallone is powerful as Rambo. He’s like Frankenstien or King Kong, a monster that is charmed by a beautiful woman. And for me the power of the film lies in that archetype. The structure of the film is sort of unique. It starts off normally, (actually it starts with documentary footage of dead bodies, my least favorite part of the movie) the predictable story kicks in but Stallone has reduced Rambo to a pure icon, almost like the stenciled logo on the poster. He hardly speaks, he just is. The way a movie hero should be. Like Clint Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. And in spite of his taciturn behaviour (or maybe because of it) you can’t help but feel for this poor guy, turned into a killing machine by a country that threw him on the garbage heap once his usefulness was finished.

And when a self sacrificing woman sparks a glimmer of empathy from this monster, you can’t help but be moved. The story precedes as expected with the missionaries being captured and Rambo having to rescue them. This is where the mercenaries come into the picture. And this is why I saw the movie. My friend Jake La Botz plays Tombstone, a young mercenary. He gets to sing an original song of his own composition as they travel up river on Rambo’s boat. By the way Jake plays Eddie in my film One Night with You and does it amazingly well.

But back to Rambo. Once they get the missionaries out of the prison camp, the film drops all story elements and becomes pure iconography. There is almost no dialog. It’s pure action, pure images and sounds. Even the end where you’d expect some sappy dialog is shorthanded to looks and monumental close ups of Rambo. And sort of like Hitcock’s trick in North By Northwest where Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are hanging off Mount Rushmore cut to them making out on a speeding train, Rambo is standing on a Burmese riverbank surrounded by hundreds of dead soldiers, the aftermath of a savage battle, cut to him walking along a road in Arizona, the mailbox says R. Rambo, he’s home after all that time, he walks onto a farm ,complete with green grass, horses, mountains clouds. I’m reminded of Sterling Hayden’s return to his Kentucky farm at the end of The Asphalt Jungle. He returns to his home so he can die. There’s a cool nightmare featuring old clips from the other Rambo films that feels like Stallone is looking back on his life, there’s also a great scene of Rambo forging a machete, Stallone looks like Hephasteus , the blacksmith of the Gods, hammering a chunk of glowing metal. Here’s a video of Jake on his Tattoo across America Tour.

Mr. Z

A few years back( like 15) I was coming out of my friends apartment when I noticed a trashed Fender amp in the back of a pickup truck. I asked my friend about it, he said it belonged to his neighbor and would ask him about it. The guy said “your friend can have it.” It was a 1954 tweed Pro. I brought it to former X guitarist Billy Zoom.

Another Mr. Z

He was living in Silver Lake and fixing amps to make some cash. A great guy by the way, generous, talented. He repaired my amp and it sounded amazing! Billy walked me out to my car, a Citroen SM. He said “My neighbor had a citroen.” “Yeah” I said. “He was an actor, Anthony Zerbe.” “Really.” I said. ” Yeah, I could always tell when he was working.” ” How.” said I. ” His car would be running, otherwise it sat there leaking hydraulic fluid.”

Citroen DS Pallas, Francis Coppola has one of these

My SM

Due to the Writer’s Strike, my car is sitting in my driveway, it needs a minor repair but I can’t fix it till I get a gig. The Eternal Hollywood Cycle. There my car sits, looking like a stranded UFO, waiting for the spare parts from Alpha Centuri to arrive. Anthony Zerbe, Omega Man co-star, I salute you!

Here’s a clip of Burt Reynolds driving an SM from The Longest Yard.

Thanks to the crazy cats at Popcorn and Sticky Floors I found this trailer from The Friends Of Eddie Coyle which by the way I feel is Peter Yates best film. I like it better than Bullitt. Robert Mitchum is great in it , an incredible understated performance complete with believable Boston accent. Peter Boyle is excellent as well. This is a gritty crime film with great acting, how can you top that! Kind of a cross between a John Huston film and an Umberto Lenzi politziotto! I worked with Peter Yates a few years back, travelling with him to Chicago to preview Suspect, he’s a real gentleman and he said he had a great time making this film. It was edited by the cigar smoking ex-wife of Roy Schieder, Cynthia Schieder. The trailer brought back some memories for me, hearing that snarling rasp of the narrator I immediately recognized him as Bob Marcato. I worked as an editor at a trailer company in NYC back in the 80’s and used Bob all the time. His voice is plastered all over exploitation trailers from the 70’s. He has such a distinctive snarl once you hear it you can never forget it. For some reason (probably a contractual thing) this film has never been released on dvd, I’m not sure if it ever came out on VHS! I had a copy somewhere but it was made from Peter’s own transfer. Maybe through my pals at Triage Motion Picture Services I can ask a mucky muck at Paramount what’s up with this unreleased gem and if I get any news I’ll post it here.

Added bonus! Here’s a link to Whitey Watch, a fascinating study of Boston organized crime and the elusive fugitive Whitey Bulger.

Ciao baby, you were one hot wasp waisted Vamp! You scared the Hell out of me when I was a lad with your appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space and maybe you even had sex with James Dean.

Check out Those Claws!

Here’s the opening to WPIX’s Chiller Theater that you figured so prominently in. Sexy and Scary what a great combination for a little kid to be exposed to. Give ’em Hell up in Heaven, Vampira!

Man, Was She Sexy!

Maestro Fernado Di Leo between the two babes from Avere Vent’anni

I just watched an Italian language version of Fernando Di Leo’s great poliziotto Il Boss (Wipeout USA). A very cool film, I had the good fortune to see it on a double bill with Montaldo’s MachineGun McCain at Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse Film Festival. The Italian version is a bit different, for one thing a lot of subtlety is lost in translation, at least it seemed that way to me, the Italian language version created an overall impression of more political corruption and intrigue. It seemed more real in a way. commissario Torri (Gianni Garko) is in bed with local Mafiosi,

Gianni Garko, commissario Torri, Order in the Mob!

informing them of police action, he has a house and bank accounts given to him by the Mob but he justifies his activities by saying he’s all about “Order”, and only the Big Bosses can maintain order among the Underworld. Is this a rationalization? does he really believe he’s helping Society with his proto Fascist philosophy? The film doesn’t give any definite answers but it’s the questions I find fascinating. Lanzetta (Henry Silva in one of his most iconic performances) is a ruthless, cold blooded killer.

Henry Silva, looking like an Incan head carved from Stone

A monster raised by a Mafia don, almost like Frankenstien, except this monster succeeds in destroying his creator. The dialog between Lanzetta and Rina Daniello (Antonia Santilli) has more dimension in the Italian version.

Have a shot of the Italian Gangster’s Favorite, J&B!

She keeps calling him “Larry” which pisses off Lanzetta to no end. Their conversations seem almost improvised, very natural. The sequence where they shack up in Lanzetta’s apartment is one of the strangest in all Crime Cinema! A full blown Mob War is raging in Palermo and right at the height of it, the guy who started it all is locked away screwing his brains out with the daughter of his ex-boss! He even complains to her that he’s spending too much time in bed with her. It’s like it’s the first time this monster has had sex. Another point that struck me more forcefully in this version is this: the film opens with one of the greatest hits in all Mafia Films, Lanzetta fires a grenade launcher from the projection booth into a theater full of Mafia dons about to watch a Swedish porno film. It’s as if the projector literally becomes a Death Ray! The Power Of Cinema!

Coldest Killer in Cinema!

But my point is this, in the aftermath of the killing, at the morgue, one guy is hysterical, screaming for revenge, nothing will satisfy him but blood!

First To Rat!

This is Attardi (Gianni Musi), later when the gang has kidnapped the daughter of the Don responsible for killing half their family, Attardi wants to kill her with his bare hands, he has to be restrained by his brothers. But Attardi is the guy who rats out the family! He tells Lanzetta where they’re holding the girl! This strikes me as so true, the over dramatic guy, screaming for revenge is the one who rats out his family! Di Leo’s crazy characters really ring true! I also noticed a funny thing, when Lanzetta is in the projection booth preparing to send the audience to Hell, the projector is running but there is no film in it! The reels are empty! Check it out.

The Boss Never Sleeps

Richard Conti is great as the insomniac Boss of Bosses and Pier Paolo Capponi is excellent as Cocchi, the rival hitman, he is like a tough Italian John Casale.

Cocchi, Casale’s Cousin From Palermo

And here’s another strange thing, at the end of the film in the Ameriacan version it ends with Lanzetta walking off down a road, in the Italian version it cuts to the lawyers office where he gets a phone call and a title appears, Coninua, to be continued. What ever happened to Part Two? I guess it never got made, too bad, I’d love for this film to keep on going!

I Wish!

I had dinner with the lovely, eternally young Barbara Bouchet during the Grindhouse festival. I asked her about working with Di Leo, she said she loved it, that when they made a film it was like one big happy family, a joy to be involved with. I was happy to hear that. As I watched Wipeout at the New Beverly Cinema Quentin was sitting next to me, he leaned over and told me that Di Leo is one of his, maybe his favorite director of all time. He also said he heard an interview where Di Leo was asked ” Are there any directors working today that you admire, or that remind you of your own filmmaking?” Di Leo replied, ” Yes, Quentin Tarantino!” It made Mr. Tarantino very happy.

Hard to find but worth it! A historical drama based on a true story about a beautiful young girl (Beatrice)

Francesco vs. Beatrice

her tyrannical father and a loyal servant that loves her, of course with all the usual Fulci fetishes, eye-trauma, torture, rape, etc.

Fulci signature Eye Trauma! That’ll teach him!

It’s told in a sort of time jumping flashback style from multiple points of view, a riff on Yojimbo but not the same technique. Great production value, medieval Italia, Roma, villas in the campagnia.

Cool Optical, Matte shot using Castel Sant Angelo

Soldiers, cardinals, Inquisitors, there’s even a papal investigator who is a Medieval Columbo!

The Pope’s Colombo! Official Investigator Of The Vatican

A dysfunctional family headed by a father who is a total sadist prick. He has one guy torn apart by dogs, throws a party when two of his sons are killed in Salamanca ( he’s notoriously cheap and rejoices he dosen’t have to foot the bill for his sons crusading any more), imprisons his daughter in a filthy dungeon, abuses her and everyone around him.

Tomas Milian as loyal servant Olympio

Olympio loves Beatrice

Tomas Milian plays Olympio the servant, he becomes Beatrice’s lover and helps her off her old man.

The Torture Of Olympio

The best scene in the movie is when Milian, who has been graphically tortured in horrible ways and has confessed implicating Beatrice, is brought before her to confront her. The Inquisitors expect him to contradict her and say she’s guilty, he looks at her from the floor, his body torn up, shattered, a mess. He apologizes to her and says she’s innocent!

When confronted with His Lady he recants his confession

The Inquisitors are pissed! They drag him off to torture some more and while breaking his bones on the Wheel, he dies. There is also a wild boar of a man called Il Catalano. He is a hired killer brought in to finish off Francesco Cenci( George Wilson). We first meet him in a cave where he lives, he’s passed out with two naked prostitutes.

Catalano, The Human Wild Boar

This guy is great, there’s no one like him in Cinema today! Ignazio Spalla! Check him out! Super cool casting by Fulci in giving this cat the part.

Boar Hunt

Everyone cracks under torture except the beautiful Beatrice, they wrap a rope arond her head and tighten it until her head almost explodes but she doesn’t crack. She’s the toughest one in the movie, maybe from putting up with that asshole of a father for all those years. She tells the court how he raped and abused her and her lawyers shout it at the trial for the whole world to hear.

Royal Rapist Rat

The people of Rome want her set free! She gets a groundswell of support which pisses off the Pope, a dude with a hugh, hairy mole on his puss.

Pederast Cardinal with his Holy Boy Toy

The papcy covets Cenci’s land and fortune, what better way than to off his family and claim it all for the Church! I heard tell that when this movie came out in Italy people in the theater were yelling for the director to be killed! Fulci pissed off the Christian Democrats with this anti-Church tale of greed, torture and murder. It does bring to mind the Salem witch trial where women were offed so greedy townspeople could glom their real estate! It also bears comparison with another cool movie, Michael Reeves Witchfinder General. Check it out if you can track down a copy, you won’t be sorry.

They ran an episode of The Men Who Made The Movies the other night on TCM. It was about William Wellman.

“Wild Bill” Wellman
The guy had an incredible career, winning the first Academy Award for Wings, making great films like Public Enemy with James Cagney, a film that ushered in the Gangster Era of moviemaking and is the bookend to White Heat in terms of Cagney’s career. Both are about tough characters with doting mothers. This would make a great double bill. He also made The Ox-Bow Incident and another great war film Battleground. But it’s G.I. Joe that I’m here to tell you about. It’s my favorite war movie of all time. I even like it better than Attack with Jack Palance. I was gratified to learn via The Men Who Made The Movies that it’s Welman’s favorite film of all! It is great. Written by Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent, ably portrayed by Burgess Meredith in the film.

Burgess Meredith and Ernie Pyle flank an Unknown guy

Pyle went into the thick of the action and wrote about the common man, his stories of the dog soldiers on the front lines carrying out orders in the face of intolerable conditions are what inspired Wellman to make the film. Wellman spent time with Pyle in New Mexico at Pyle’s place. Ernie came to visit the Wellman’s in Hollywood and while playing shoot em up with the kids uttered a line that stuck in Wellman’s head “A man falls dying only once.” It would prove prophetic. The film follows a unit of infantry led by Capt. Bill Walker(Robert Mitchum) as they struggle to take Monte Cassino. Wellman filmed in real bombed out towns in Italy, where snipers still abounded. He used real soldiers as extras, firing a Howitzer and performing other military tasks to add reality. A lot of the soldiers in the film never got to see it, they were killed in action shortly after filming.

Life In A Bunker

There are some amazing sequences, one soldier carries a recording his wife back in the states made of his baby boy’s first words. He carefully guards the disc like a treasure, looking for a phonograph so he can hear it. Finally he finds one in a burned out village but it doesn’t work. He struggles to fix it but he can’t get it to go. Then after it seemed it would never work, it does. He hears his son’s first words and he snaps, charging out of the cave he’s been living in to kill all the Germans. He has to be restrained, his mind is gone.

Wild Bill got his nickname as a WWI pilot

But it’s Robert Mitchum’s nuanced performance as the bone tired world weary Capt. Walker that steals the show. He has to write the letters to the next of kin. He has to order new, inexperienced men out to the front line where there life expectancy is two hours. He has to be sane, and responsible in the face of the insanity of war. He delivers in spades. This is the film that made Mitchum a star. The Story Of G.I. Joe is an anti-war movie. One of the best. Something we need to see today, maybe more than ever. And Ernie Pyle never got to see the movie either. He was killed by a Japanese sniper bullet in the South Pacific before the film was released. ” A man falls dying only once.”