#26 - Hell's Heroes (1987)
Competent, unspectacular Italian Vietnam action here, featuring MST3K favorite Miles (and Miles) O'Keefe and Fred Williamson, directed by Max Steel(no, really).
O'Keefe plays Sgt. Darkin, a disgruntled vet who just wants to go home. After losing one of his men to a Viet Cong tiger trap, he is asked to escort a visiting Senator (Chuck Connors, in a literally five minute appearance). After mouthing off to the senator, Darkin ends up the only survivor of a Cong attack that kills Connors. Believing Darkin to be a coward and a deserter, he is sentenced to prison camp, a prison camp of 6, apparently. But after the camp is destroyed in an enemy attack, Darkin and his fellow generic movie soldiers (Bronx, Little Rock, Trash, and Fred Williamson (he's got a character name, but really, he's Fred Williamson)) attempt to make their way to freedom, slaughtering many Viet Cong along the way.
At least that's what it sounded like, anyway. The print I watched was somewhat murky and there was a lot of filtered day for night shooting, resulting in at least a third or more of the movie being very dark and hard to follow. On top of it, the plot is pretty dumb. The evidence of Darkin's 'cowardice' is captured by a TV crew, but the recording is shut off before the actual attack (which the news crew should have been around for), and his conviction seems to be more of a function to move what little there is of the plot along. This is pretty much just another generic Italian action movie, the kind that flooded video stores during the first big video boom of the late 80's. Stelvio Massi (the Italian director behind the Max Steel name) was a pretty competent action director and cinematographer, so it's disappointing that Hell's Heroes is so generic.
O'Keefe plays Sgt. Darkin, a disgruntled vet who just wants to go home. After losing one of his men to a Viet Cong tiger trap, he is asked to escort a visiting Senator (Chuck Connors, in a literally five minute appearance). After mouthing off to the senator, Darkin ends up the only survivor of a Cong attack that kills Connors. Believing Darkin to be a coward and a deserter, he is sentenced to prison camp, a prison camp of 6, apparently. But after the camp is destroyed in an enemy attack, Darkin and his fellow generic movie soldiers (Bronx, Little Rock, Trash, and Fred Williamson (he's got a character name, but really, he's Fred Williamson)) attempt to make their way to freedom, slaughtering many Viet Cong along the way.
At least that's what it sounded like, anyway. The print I watched was somewhat murky and there was a lot of filtered day for night shooting, resulting in at least a third or more of the movie being very dark and hard to follow. On top of it, the plot is pretty dumb. The evidence of Darkin's 'cowardice' is captured by a TV crew, but the recording is shut off before the actual attack (which the news crew should have been around for), and his conviction seems to be more of a function to move what little there is of the plot along. This is pretty much just another generic Italian action movie, the kind that flooded video stores during the first big video boom of the late 80's. Stelvio Massi (the Italian director behind the Max Steel name) was a pretty competent action director and cinematographer, so it's disappointing that Hell's Heroes is so generic.