Hell is for Heroes
Back Door to Hell (1964)
directed by Monte Hellman
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Although the unavailable-on-DVD adventure film that Monte Hellman shot in the Philippines at the same time he made Back Door to Hell sounds like the better seventy-five minutes, casting men and women of the South Pacific as Indians to the Army’s cowboys is a neatly modern twist on the usual gung-ho hullabaloo. Like most Westerns, Back Door to Hell is a little careless with its origins of races, and the leader of the redskins gets a Mexican name that Eli Wallach would be proud to wear: Paco. The barely professional cast – including a Donald “Boon” Schoenstein type in the role of the duck-tailed Lieutenant – wins no free passes for Jack Nicholson defending “Japs as human beings,” but Hellman’s anti-authoritarian, low-budget beginnings are, however flat, still appealing. After all, those are real ruins and real palm trees; with a better camera and more money a man couldn’t feel the heat of the jungle any better than here. And if Laurie Bird was the kind of girl to haul a yak fur shoulder bag through lands of belts, short hair, and compacts, her Filipino predecessor dresses just like an extra from Days of Being Wild surrounded by men in fatigues and in a hurry.
directed by Monte Hellman
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Although the unavailable-on-DVD adventure film that Monte Hellman shot in the Philippines at the same time he made Back Door to Hell sounds like the better seventy-five minutes, casting men and women of the South Pacific as Indians to the Army’s cowboys is a neatly modern twist on the usual gung-ho hullabaloo. Like most Westerns, Back Door to Hell is a little careless with its origins of races, and the leader of the redskins gets a Mexican name that Eli Wallach would be proud to wear: Paco. The barely professional cast – including a Donald “Boon” Schoenstein type in the role of the duck-tailed Lieutenant – wins no free passes for Jack Nicholson defending “Japs as human beings,” but Hellman’s anti-authoritarian, low-budget beginnings are, however flat, still appealing. After all, those are real ruins and real palm trees; with a better camera and more money a man couldn’t feel the heat of the jungle any better than here. And if Laurie Bird was the kind of girl to haul a yak fur shoulder bag through lands of belts, short hair, and compacts, her Filipino predecessor dresses just like an extra from Days of Being Wild surrounded by men in fatigues and in a hurry.
posted by NPK at 5:01 AM
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