Thursday, January 31, 2019

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! HEROES DIE YOUNG (Allied Artists, 1960)

With a tagline like "Eight men...one girl...and a bomb!!!" yer really askin' for trouble, but I kinda like this pre-soft 'n sensitive man kinda World War II flick a whole lot more'n those tearjerkin' kinda mooms that got made years later. And if your type of war entertainment veers closer to COMBAT than it does say...M*A*S*H then I get the feeling that you'll get a kick outta this 'un too.

A buncha Amerigan soldiers are on a mission to bomb a Romanian oil refinery during the big 'un where they travel the countryside with a pack of donkeys as well as some local gal who seems to be suffering from a case of terminal ragitis the way she sneers at the soldiers an' all. While making their way on foot to the refinery they not only lose a donkey but their C Rations (from what I understand is no big loss) as well as one of the soldiers, the "sensitive" one who likes to carve figurines so it ain't no big thing either.

An' ooh man is this 'un lower 'n low budget what with the heavy use of alla that war footage you see on various cable channels being used to pad this thing out, and of course padding is the name o' the game with HEROES DIE YOUNG because it sure needs a li'l nudge here and there. Like the part where the cowboy soldier cons the hipster city guy into thinking that donkeys can sniff out gold if you give 'em a li'l chocolate to stimulate their nasal passages. Nothing especially noteworthy about it, but it did make for mild diversion.

As usual it's sure great seeing this kinda mooms where outdated ideals like heroism and masculinity are placed up front 'n center for human consumption. None of that standard white guy as prime pud guff to be seen here bub, and like if you want a war flick that ain't brainy and filled with whole sorta deep psychowhooziz scenes attacking a whole slew of everyday primadonna bugaboos well like you know the answer already, bub!

No comments: