Just as the Korean conflict was escalating, Sam Fuller set about making this grim film about an American patrol lost in the jungle. A gruff veteran, Sergeant Zack (played with true grit by Gene Evans) is the sole survivor of a North Korean ambush. Bound and crawling through a field of corpses, he is freed by Short Round, a South Korean orphan. The two then begin their dangerous trek back to secured territory. Along the way, a motley assortment of GI stragglers is accumulated. Among them is Private Bronte (Robert Hutton), a conscientious objector in the last war but now willing to fight commies; Sgt. Tanaka (Richard Loo), a heroic Nisei; Corp. Thompson (James Edwards), a Black medic; and Lt. Driscoll (Steve Brodie), a somewhat cowardly officer. Fuller's disdain for war creeps into every characterization. But it is Sergeant Zack, gritty, emotionless, almost bestial in his lack of sentiment, who calibrates the film's cynicism. Zack is pure individualism, shunning any human contact for the sake of survival. Retreating inward from the harsh realities of combat, he forfeits the supposed values that brought him to this scrubby forest. When a crack finally appears in Zack's armor, the dogs of war come sniffing. Manny Farber, discussing The Steel Helmet, observed: "Fuller is one of the first to try for poetic purity through a merging of unlimited sadism, done candidly and close-up, with stretches of pastoral nostalgia in which there are flickers of myth." Thanks to Tony Safford, U.S. Film Festival, for arranging this 35mm screening.