MERRILL'S MARAUDERS (1962)

Decent, dutiful, just a little dull, adjectives rarely associated with irascible writer/director Sam Fuller, but apt for this standard-issue WWII mission pic about General Merrill’s American contingent of 3000 volunteer soldiers, part of a multi-national Allied operation to retake Burma from the Japanese.  Jeff Chandler, in his final role (dead at 42 from post-surgery complications when the film came out), is at war with his superiors, his ever-expanding assignment, and even the island’s physical properties, but never lets up in spite of casualties and his own deteriorating heart condition.  Fuller’s one-note script covers too much and not enough, the men’s personalities not registering even with nicknames like Bullseye, Chowhound & Kolowicz.  (Wait, that’s a real name, not that Claude Akins looks like a Kolowicz.)  Then skips the final assault.  Also missing: dense jungle, fetid swamps & the dreaded heat.  All these far better suggested by Raoul Walsh & Errol Flynn in their Burmese mission pic, OBJECTIVE, BURMA, made toward war’s end in ‘45 when darker, more realistic portrayals had become possible.  Here, you only get echt Fuller in some fairly lame comic business that seems to interest him more than the heroics.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, OBJECTIVE, BURMA/’45; its fine, Oscar nom’d Franz Waxman score generously sampled here sans credit.  OR: The more personal WWII pic Fuller thought he might be allowed to make right after this, THE BIG RED ONE.  Finally made in 1980, but heavily cut before a full-length restoration in 2004.  (You root for it to work, but it’s largely disappointing.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/big-red-one-1980.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As Hollywood moved further away from the war years, the age of all those soldier boys also moved, from the teens & early 20-somethings who’d been drafted, toward 30 or even 40-somethings who had studio connections or been in the war a decade before.  The loss of fresh young faces sent to battle and possible death taking a dramatic toll on nearly all the many, many major studio WWII films made from the ‘50 to the ‘’70s.