On June 24 and 25, TCM is showing fourteen straight Korean War movies: The Steel Helmet (1951), Men In War (1951) , Men Of The Fighting Lady (1954), I Want You (1951), Battle Circus (1953), Tank Battalion (1958), Mission Over Korea (1953), Battle Taxi (1955), The Bamboo Prison (1955), All the Young Men (1960), Take the High Ground! (1953), Time Limit (1957), The Rack (1956) and Hell in Korea (1956).
If you’re gonna watch just one, I recommend The Steel Helmet, a gritty classic by the great Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war. Fuller and Peckinpah favorite Gene Evans is especially good as the sergeant.
This time, TCM is not showing the three most well-known Korean War movies: Manchurian Candidate, Pork Chop Hill and M*A*S*H.
Earlier this year, TCM broadcast War Hunt, a 1962 film about Robert Redford joining a Korean War unit as a new replacement with John Saxon as the platoon’s psycho killer. Along with Redford, Sidney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola are in the cast, making War Hunt the only film with three Oscar-winning directors as actors. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss for Coppola as an uncredited convoy truck driver.
