FIXED BAYONETS – 1951 This is not an antiseptic flag waving propaganda war film. It is a brutal, hard hitting piece about fear, and courage, among men who know they could die at any moment. Director Sam Fuller pulls no punches in this Korean War film from 1951.The US, UN and South Korean forces had pushed the North Korean Army back almost to the border with China. They were then caught off guard when Chinese Red Army forces attacked them. This soon forced a massive retreat along the whole front.This film is about a small group of American soldiers left behind to man a rear guard post. They need to make the Chinese believe that they are facing a much larger unit. The US unit needs to delay the Chinese for 48 hours to allow their own troops a chance to fall back and regroup.They chose a narrow pass through the mountains to base their defence on. They mine the approaches and set up a series of machine gun posts. Whenever the Chinese probe the defences, the American hit back hard and heavy, keeping the Chinese guessing as to the US unit strength.This tactic can only work for so long, as there are only 50 or so soldiers. First the LT. in charge, Craig Hill, is killed, then, the two senior sergeants, Michael O'Shea and Gene Evans bite the bullet. Command of the survivors, falls to Richard Basehart. Basehart is a former officer candidate who has a fear of giving orders.Forced to step up and take charge, Basehart fights his personal demons and does just that. He holds the post for as long as he can, then leads the survivors back to meet with the rest of the division.Except for a couple of scenes, the whole production was filmed on a sound stage. This does not distract from the film at all, there are plenty of well-staged battle sequences etc throughout the film. The action is down and dirty, with all looking like they have been put through a wringer. This is a gritty, well-made war film.The director, Sam Fuller also scored big a little earlier with another Korean War film, THE STEEL HELMET. Both these are well worth a look for war film buffs.

The war was still going on. No one, especially MacArthur, knew WHAT was going on. I spent a year in Korea and when I came back I asked my brother a lot about his experiences. He was in the 1st Cav which spent most of it's time running South and East towards Hungnam and pulling the 1st Marines out of the Changjin debacle after their mentally challenged commander refused to retreat and was cut off. I then began to study that war. My conclusion about this movie; it is as factual as Hollywood's movies about the Earp brothers, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, et al. In other words, it was as much about the real Korean war as it was about life on Mars. The screen writers knew nothing about the war so they made up one. A God-awful grasping at sophomoric conjecture. An insult to the men from the 16 allied countries who served there.

This is an interesting movie to watch on themes of responsibility and its inevitability. The person who wants it the least is the person who ultimately gets it and, by virtue partly of his reluctance, turns out to be the best suited for the job at hand. And in this film that job is to be the leader of a rear guard action to dissuade the North Koreans from closing in on a withdrawing regiment. The chain goes from the regimental colonel, who we see as the film opens, a "one of the guys" type of guy with a wad of chewing tobacco, clustered with some other men in a tent, and then to a young lieutenant who's company is chosen to lead the rear guard action, and the GI's in the company played by some familiar faces, and is whittled down to a young corporal who would never want the responsibility but exceeds his own limitations and ultimately wins his own self respect.

I don't think the number of blunders militarily and strategically contained in this turkey can be beaten. Everything in this mess was done on the cheap and made soldiers look really stupid. Examples: at the start the 2-star General is given strategic advice by a Lieutenant and accepts it unquestionably. The map used by the Lt. shows enemy positions but they apparently have only a single narrow valley to use in advancing on the battalion (even though the map showed a dozen more). The rear guard takes up position from which they are clearly spotted by the enemy and exposed. They pound our heroes from high ground but this superior fire power makes little difference. An single enemy tank advances near the end (at the beginning referred to as armored division), proceeded by a solitary infantry point (!) who moves extremely slowly without cover scouting the area, then waives the tank on when he deems it save to proceed - a most bizarre scene. The soldiers take cover in a cave. All around them is ice and deep snow but in the cave not a yard from the entrance is a deep puddle through which they all wade repeatedly - their feet would last mere minutes before they freeze off. Later the survivors wade pathetically slowly and chest high through a river to return to their unit. Remember it is deep winter and the ground is frozen. Yeah right!And on and on it goes. They yell commands to positions on higher ground, they lay mines near their own position and warn each other not to trample on them (!) At the start, credit is given to some soldier who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Was he blind, or did Director Fuller just ignore him?Truly the most inept soldiers I've ever seen. One of them pokes around in his own wounded leg with a bayonet and eventually pulls out a piece of shrapnel, without a wince or a moan. He announces that that should qualify him as a surgeon. Now that was funny.