My mother sold my novel to Hollywood for Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson – The Big Red One (1980)
The Big Red One (1980)
Hello to all of the classic people that are returning. I am glad you are back. I want to welcome any new visitors. Today on Classic Movie Review, we are taking on The Big Red One (1980).
The first time I saw this movie, I liked it. But I thought it had a lot of silly scenes. That was until I learned that it was based in part on the World War II experiences of Samuel L. Fuller.
Fuller began working on newspapers before he was 18 years old. When America entered World War II, Fuller became an infantry private rather than taking the path of a news correspondent and officer. Fuller served with the 1st Infantry Division in Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany.
After the war, Fuller worked as an author, whose first book was released during the war, a screenwriter, and finally, a prolific director.
One of his first big films was The Baron of Arizona (1950), in which actor Vincent Price attempted to forge documents that would give him ownership of the entire state. Fuller directed around 24 full-length movies. He produced, wrote, directed, and occasionally acted in many of these. Fuller was very active in the Film Noir genre. These films include Pickup on South Street (1953), House of Bamboo (1955), The Crimson Kimono (1959), and Underworld U.S.A. (1961).
Fuller directed many great Westerns, including I Shoot Jessie James (1949), Run of the Arrow (1957), and Forty Guns (1957).
However, he was most prolific in the genre of War films. These films include the excellent film The Steel Helmet (1951), Fixed Bayonets! (1951), Hell and High Water (1954), China Gate (1957), Verboten! (1959), and the very good Merrill’s Marauders (1962).
However, the one he was waiting to make was based on his real-life war experience and is today’s film, The Big Red One (1980).
Actors – The Big Red One (1980)
Returning
The cast for this movie was pretty amazing. Most did well, a few faded away, and one had some success (sarcasm).
The movie focused on one squad during the war. The squad was led by a grizzled veteran from the 1st World War known as the Sergeant and was played superbly by Lee Marvin. Of course, Marvin was a veteran of World War II in the Pacific. Marvin was first covered playing a stinker of a bad guy in the John Wayne Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
The son of my second favorite vampire actor and the half-brother of my favorite TV Kung Fu guy, Robert Carradine, was in the role of Pvt. Zab. Zab was essentially the Samuel Fuller character. Robert was first covered in a John Wayne Western, The Cowboys (1972).
Director Fuller took a small role as a War Correspondent. Fuller was first mentioned in the exciting Film Noir Pickup on South Street (1953).
New
As for the squad member that had some later success, it was Pvt. Griff, who was played by Mark Hamill. Hamill was in California in 1951. He attended Los Angeles City College and studied drama. In 1970, as an adult, Hamill began working on television, including TV movies.
His work in film began in 1977, voicing a role in the animated film Wizards (1977) and that other film where he was a space orphan. What was that called? Oh, yes, Star War (1977). Of course, he was in the other ones The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019)as they got progressively worse. But that Daisey Ridley can act a bit.
On the regular timeline, Hamill acted in Corvette Summer (1979) and The Big Red One (1980). He continued to work in movies and on television. However, most of his talent was applied to voice work, as Hamill has a fantastic ability to create different voices. That being said, he was hilarious in The Machine (2023) as the furniture-selling father of the title character.
Story – The Big Red One (1980)
The movie begins in France in 1918 during World War I. The Sergeant (Lee Marvin) is walking in the no man’s land between the trenches. The film is in black and white. The area is destroyed, with dead lying among the crater holes and destruction. Cautiously the Sergeant moves as he watches for enemy soldiers. He is near the wooden Christ on a Cross statue.
As the Sergeant checks for living wounded, he is suddenly attacked by a black horse that has gone mad during the fighting. Of the 16 million or so animals that served in World War I, it is estimated that around eight million horses and one million dogs died[1].
The Sergeant survives the attack, but the horse breaks his rifle before it runs off. An unarmed German, they weren’t nazzies at this time, comes out of the smoke with his hands up, saying in Germany that the war is over and don’t shoot. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed at 5:30am and took effect at 11:00am[2] , so there were undoubtedly delays in getting the notification to all the troops.
The Sergeant hides behind the cross and kills the German with his knife. The camera pans to the watching eyes of the wooden Christ. The Sergeant returns to his lines and finds them to be empty. He slowly searches until he finds a captain shaving in one of the shelters.
The Sergeant explains his late arrival because he was lost in the smoke and about the crazy horse destroying his rifle. The Sergeant works on a piece of cloth with his knife as they talk. Finally, the Sergeant holds a small red strip of cloth to his arm and says it represents the 1st Division. He continues that he took it off the German he killed. The Captain has the Sergeant take a drink as the officer tells him that the war has been over for four hours. The Captain says he didn’t know when he killed the German. The Sergeant replies that the deadman knew it was over.
There will be a bit more about the origins of the division patch for the 1st Division or the Big Red One as they are known in the conclusion.
The movie switches to color showing the Big Red One of the 1st Division as the first color object. The narration begins with Pvt. Zab (Robert Carradine) that the design was widely known by the beginning of the Second World War.
It is 1942 when you meet the squad, the Sergeant, Pvt. Zab, Pvt. Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), Pvt. Johnson (Kelly Ward), and Pvt. Griff (Mark Hamill) they are on a transport ship heading for North Africa as a part of Operation Torch.
Griff is introduced as a sharpshooter, Johnson as a pig farmer with hemorrhoids, Vinci a New York street kid, and Zab says he wrote the book, “The Dark Deadline.” Fuller based the character Zab on himself and also wrote a book called “The Dark Page,” which was made into Scandal Sheet (1952), which I have already reviewed. The link will be in the description.
They are unsure if the pro-nazzie Vichy French would fight against the Americans. After placing condoms on the rifles to keep the water out, they load into land crafts and hit the beach. There was some fighting, but at least in the movie, it ended quickly. Zab is shocked when Griff misses an easy shot.
The squad spends some downtime near the sea. Fuller’s first cut was over four hours long, and I bet he emphasized the time they were hanging around between battles. There is a reconstructed version that has an additional 48 minutes, but I have not seen it yet. Maybe one day, we can see the director’s cut in all its glory. Griff tells the Sergeant that he can’t murder people. The Sergeant says they don’t murder; they kill, like with animals.
Somewhere else in the desert, Sgt. Schroeder (Siegfried Rauch), a nazzie, is with the Africa Corp. One man is mocking the nazzies and says Schroeder murdered an officer. Schroeder parroting the Seageant, says he kills and doesn’t murder. When the soldier refuses to follow orders, Schroeder murders the man. The nazzies move out for Kasserine Pass.
Kasserine Pass is a battle where the Americans were soundly beaten in early 1943. In the movies, it is the battle that takes place just before Patton (George C. Scott) takes over command in the movie Patton (1970)
The Sergeant and the squad are on point in the Kasserine Pass. They see a boatload of nazzie tanks and infantry heading their way. The Sergeant tells the men they are digging in to let the tanks pass over them.
They dig their holes, and the tanks pass over them. There are blood-curdling screams as the tanks roll past. I always assumed it was men being crushed in their holes. However, Fuller stated that was the only time you could show your actual terror by screaming under the noise of the tank.
Griff freaks and begins running. The rest of the squad, including the Sergeant, follow. The Sergeant is hit in the buttock and falls to his knees. Film historian Richard Schickel said this was a recreation of how Marvin was wounded on Saipan during World War II when he, like Forrest, was shot in the buttock.
The Sergeant is taken to a nazzie hospital in Tunis. Apparently, he has been recovering for some time. When air raid sirens sound, the Sergeant grabs some Arab robes and begins to leave the hospital.
A wounded American soldier comes in and asks if anyone is from the Big Red One. The soldier explains to the Sergeant that the Division won a series of battles after Kasserine and retook Tunis. The Sergeant says this is Tunis. Suddenly, a group of allied soldiers enter and begin killing nazzies. The soldier “wounded” pulls out a Thompson and begins firing at the enemy.
In his robes, the Sergeant is reunited with his squad. Zab narrates that the Division will be headed for the invasion of Sicily. The four men and the Sergeant are the only survivors of the original 12-man squad.
The group ended up on another ship on July 10, 1943, heading to a defended beach in Sicily. Another soldier begins mocking Vinci for being Italian, and the squad defends their mate. This beach landing is much more brutal than the earlier one in Africa.
As they go inland, they have to face snipers. Zab narrates that the way to find a sniper is to send a guy into the open and see if he gets shot. A new guy tries to make friends with the five by bringing water. On one of the runs, he trips a mine and loses his testicles.
The patrol moves forward and takes cover in a cave. It is not long before nazzie armor and infantry are moving outside of the cave. The Army artillery has not come ashore yet. Griff almost runs away but decides not to. Naval guns offshore destroy the tanks.
A point of personal privilege; it is commonly stated that D-Day was successful because Hitler was asleep, and they couldn’t release the Panzer divisions. But every time armor came within range of the sea, naval guns destroyed them.
Later they are sent out to find a big gun that is wreaking havoc on the advancing Americans. They cross paths with a young Sicilian boy transporting his dead mother in a cart for burial. The boy says he will show where the gun is if they get a coffin for his mother. The boy insists they take his mother when they go for the gun.
The gun is a self-propelled 88mm or a Tiger tank hidden in a building. They have women working around the building as camouflage. They kill the nazzies and destroy the tank. The women fall on their dead guard and chop him to pieces with their scythes.
The old women make a feast for the squad. At first, it looks like the Americans will not hold up their end of the bargain. However, the commanding general
In November 1943, the Division was sent to England to train for D-Day and not to fight in Italy as they expected. Once again, the squad is on a boat heading for another landing. This time it will be in France on June 6, 1944.
One of the replacements, Lemchek, wants to trade positions for the Bangalore Torpedo relay. The Bangalore was invented by a British engineer stationed at Bangalore, India[3]. The name would work as well if the name came from bang galore. Anyway, the weapon is a series of tubes filled with explosives. They were assembled by a team of men and slid along the ground until they were under barbed wire or other obstacles, then exploded. None of the veterans are willing to trade.
Eventually, they transfer to landing crafts and hit the beach, and this is the worse attack yet. In the movie and real life, the troops were told they would face poorly trained and ill-equipped combat rejects. The nazzies were given a similar line by their commanders.
The passing of time during the landing was shown on a dead man’s watch as the body floated in the bloody surf. The squad is pinned down on the beach and has to do the Bangalore relay to clear an exit draw. Men were called one at a time by a prearranged number to take sections forward. Replacements are knocked off until it comes to number eight, Griff. Griff freezes at the end of the line, but shots from the Segearent force him back into action. He eventually gets the job done and opens the draw.
In a real-life and fictionalized version, two events were recreated. First, Fuller / Zab was assigned as a runner to tell the Colonel that the draw was open. Following the battle, the squad is in a rear area, and Fuller / Zab sees Pvt Keiser (Perry Lang) reading a copy of his book. This was the first time Fuller / Zab discovered that his mother had sold his book.
Because Zab met Keiser by seeing the book, Keiser was the only replacement taken in by the surviving four.
Near the Christ on the Cross statue seen in the First World War scenes, Schroeder and his nazzies set up an ambush near a broken tank. Schroeder has the men lying in and around the tank pretending to be dead. Schroeder climbs on the back of the cross to oversee the action.
Zab narrates that the Segearent is acting strange as they move towards the area where he had fought in World War I. The squad sees a 1st Division monument to battle dead and mistakenly thinks it is from their war. Keiser is sent forward to scout the tank.
Keiser being inexperienced, misses the planned ambush. The nazzies let Keiser return to his squad safely. The Sergeant and the others come forward. The Sergeant recognizes that it is an ambush because they have infantry uniforms in the tanks. He kills the men inside the tank with his knife.
The Sergeant pretends to call the company commander and says he is Sgt. Opposum, indicating that someone is playing dead. He pretends they were ordered back to bring the entire platoon forward. The nazzies speak English, and the trick works as the greedy monkey waits for a bigger prize.
The squad starts heading away, and the Sergeant tells them it is an ambush. Keiser opens fire first, and they kill most of the nazzies. Some of the squad’s replacements are wounded. In a war film troupe, a close-up of a nazzie belt is shown with the phrase, “God is with us.”
After the battle, a wounded French man arrives on a motorcycle with a young woman who is in labor riding in the sidecar. Johnson and the Sergeant help the woman give birth inside the tank. They use condoms for gloves, cheese wrapping for face covering, and ammo belts as stirrups.” Schroeder waits and slips away when it is safe.
The squad was sent to Belgium in September 1944. They are tasked with killing a spotter that is inside a monastery. The building is being used as an insane asylum, and a female underground fighter is inside to help.
Walloon (Stéphane Audran) helps the squad enter the asylum as she cuts the throats of several nazzies. There are a lot of nazzies, and a gunfight breaks out. The squad wins the fight. A mental patient grabs a machine gun and begins shooting people, screaming, “I am sane, I am sane.” Zab has to kill the man, but it raises some interesting questions about war.
Sometime later, Zab gets a letter from his mother saying she sold his novel to Hollywood for $15,000. The letter said it would star Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson. However, the movie Scandal Sheet (1952) did not come out until 1952 and starred Broderick Crawford and John Derek. Zap says he will host a squad party, but the guys need to come up with ideas. Keiser cuts off Kelly and says he wants to hold a big woman’s butt against a frozen window and then spend time thawing it out.
Later the squad was in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, fought from September through December 1944, near the French/Belgium border. This battle is noted for the nazzie shelling of treetops that would send masses of wooden splinters downward. The squad has to move forward as they search for snipers hidden in the woods. Keiser is killed by a sniper but kills the man before he dies.
The Battle of Bulge, December 1944 to January 1945, bushed the Big Red One back into France. By the end of winter, the Allies had retaken Belgium. Zap finally gets a chance to have his party with food, drinks, and, I assume, prostitutes. The Sergeant tells the men to keep their front site covers on, or they will get a rusty bore.
The squad was ordered forward to Falkenau, Czechoslovakia. The Sergeant was the only one that knew they were liberating a concentration camp guarded by SS nazzies. The enemy put up a tough fight, but the five prominent members of the squad made it through without a scratch.
Each squad member is horrified when they see the evil the nazzies have undertaken. Griff chases one of the SS men into the crematorium. The dirty nazzie hides in an oven. When Griff opens the door, the SS man pulls the trigger, trying to kill Griff. His gun misfires.
Seeing the enemy sitting in smoldering bones after trying to kill him for hate’s sake, Griff shoots the nazzie. He continues to fire, at last understanding why he was in the war and why all nazzies need to be dead. He keeps firing until the clip ejects from his rifle.
The Sergeant walks by in the most remarkable manner ever and says you got him as he hands Griff a fresh clip. Griff finally stops firing.
The Sergeant finds a young boy in the camp. He cares for and feeds the kid but cannot save his life. The men are surprised at the Sergeant’s care of the young boy, missing the point that he has cared for them for the last four years.
The boy dies while the Sergeant is giving him a piggyback ride. That evening, the Sergeant gives the boy a burial by a tree.
Like a bad penny, Schroeder shows up in the dark, saying the war is over in German. The Sergeant takes the man down with his knife. Just as he does, the squad men break protocol and should loudly for the Sergeant. He begins to reprimand the men for noise and light discipline. They tell him the war has been over for four hours. Griff tells the Sergeant that he didn’t know the war was over when he killed the nazzie. Again, the Sergeant says he did.
Griff then realizes that the enemy is still alive. The Sergeant and the four men go to work and save the man’s life. Zab says the real irony of the war is that they had more in common with the nazzies they saved than all the replacements that died without them getting to know them. Zab says he will dedicate his book to survivors, the only glory in war.
Conclusion – The Big Red One (1980)
It was very late in his career when Fuller got the movie he always wanted to be filmed. The last directing job for which he was not fired was Shark (1969), and he was uncredited.
Since Hamill was coming off Star Wars (1977), they switched him from the role of Zab to the role of Griff. Griff is the most conflicted character, but I think Zab was the better role. The name Griff and Lemchek were regularly used in Fuller’s novels and stories.
It was primarily shot in Isreal to get the right look for the film. Fuller remarked that it was odd to see actors dressed as SS or other nazzies take off their helmets and be wearing a yarmulke.
As for the patch design, sadly, there is no definitive source for its design. There are two main stories. The first is that the Division would paint red ones on their truck in England for easy identification.
The second story says that a commanding general in the Division cut a one from his red flannel underwear. It is said that a lieutenant said the general underwear was showing. The general told the junior officer to find something better. The lieutenant is said to have cut a piece of gray cloth from a prisoner’s uniform and placed the red flannel on the gray background.[4]
World-Famous Short Summary – I’d feel safe if Lee Marvin was in charge
If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review where you get your Podcasts. It really helps the show get found.
As a technical note, references and citations are listed for each show on the site at classicmovierev.com.
Beware the moors.
FOUR MOVIE ADDS – Subscribe, Boxes, MERCH
[1] How many horses and donkeys died in ww1? – TeachersCollegesj
[2] Armistice of 11 November 1918 – Wikipedia
[3] Bangalore torpedo – Wikipedia
[4] 1st Infantry Division (United States) – Wikipedia
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.