Spikeopath Merrill's Marauders is directed by Samuel Fuller, who also co-adapts the screenplay with Milton Sperling from the book, The Marauders, written by Charlton Ogburn Jr. It stars Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Andrew Duggan, Claude Akins, Peter brown, Will Hutchins and John Hoyt. A Cinemascope/Technicolor production with music by Howard Jackson and cinematography by William H. Clothier.Cracker-jack war movie, packed to the rafters with blood, sweat and tears, and best of all, gritty realism. Story is about the warfare unit led by Frank Merrill (Chandler) during the Burmese campaign in 1944. Their mission was to destroy Japanese bases to avert the Japanese from making their way into India and onto a rendezvous with Hitler's forces. Their efforts was a success but it came at great cost of lives.Fuller, an ex-soldier himself, isn't interested in glorifying war for entertainment purpose, he wants to keep the focus on the men and what the mission does to them, both physically and mentally. The mission was only meant to be a short sharp shocker, but they keep getting "requested" to push on further beyond what was originally required, pushed to their limits by their leader who asked they follow his lead.In turn the men suffer through lack of food whilst some of them fall to typhus and malaria, inhospitable conditions take their toll, like trekking through miles and miles of swampy terrain, and of course they encounter the enemy on several nerve shredding occasions.As comrades fall and heart breaking letters are written to families, Fuller peppers the picture with haunting moments. A sweep of the aftermath of a battle finds dead bodies from both sides strewn about the place, the surviving Marauders too exhausted to lift themselves off the soil. A soldier breaking down crying, another willing to carry his donkey's load so it will not be shot for holding up the trek and on it goes, a whole ream of memorable instances designed to give us some idea of what the war is hell statement actually means.Filmed on location in the Philippines, it seems a little weird to say that the photography is beautiful given that so much emotional hardship and misery is being portrayed, but Clothier really brings everything to life with his superb use of colour, the great lens-man the ideal fit for Fuller's keen eye for lingering details.Performances are across the board on the good side of good, with Chandler - in what sadly would be his last film before his premature death aged 42 – turning in his best ever work. He puts his all into portraying Merrill, giving him great personality whilst hitting the mark for the various emotional beats required for a leader of men. A leader who himself carries a secret that he doesn't want his men to know about.Stock footage usage from another movie and musical lifts from two more, hint at the economical restraints on the production, but neither affects the all round quality of the picture. Free of cliché's or extraneous pap, this is one excellent – exciting - haunting war movie. 9/10

MartinHafer This film is about a unit that fought hard and suffered horrific attrition rates while fighting in Burma during World War II. It specifically focuses on the grueling and exhausting struggle they made to complete the objective against all odds.MERRILL'S MARAUDERS is a decent war film, though it's hardly one that stands above the genre. While it does receive high marks for not being overly sensational or adding unnecessary story elements, the film also seems a tad sterile and unsatisfying when all is said and done. Now perhaps I might not have felt this so strongly had the film not been directed by Sam Fuller--a guy very capable of making better war films (my personal favorite of his is STEEL HELMET--a very realistic and gritty Korean War film made on a minuscule budget). Fuller did well in not over-glamorizing the soldiers but because he didn't provide much in the way of character development, you really don't particularly care who wins or dies. This is really evident near the end when the general (Jeff Chandler) falls to the ground--does he have a fatal heart attack or is he okay? The film never even bothers to tell! And that is very telling about the soul of this film--very competent but not especially involving.

ccthemovieman-1 This was a decent World War II movie, but not as exciting as I had hoped it would be. I liked the fact it was exactly that - a war story - with no sappy romance distractions - but yet it was still on the bland side. I can't quite put my finger on it, but some spark was missing. If this was re-made today, I'm sure it would have been more of an attention-grabber.Perhaps part of the minor problem is that the story is a bit of a downer most of the way through (not that war is ever uplifting). It's basically about a group of soldiers who volunteered for this bad assignment (to fight in Burma) and when their assignment was over and they assumed they were going home, they were given further assignments. Battling unrelenting fatigue and extremely difficult terrain means there are very few upbeat moments in this film. In this based-on-a-true story movie, only about 100 soldiers were left fighting after 3,000 started. Yet a lot of the movie just shows the poor guys sloshing through swamps or slowing trying to make their way up treacherous mountain terrain.You get a few minor attempts at some humor to break up the depressing story, but they are weak such as the stereotypical southerner with his pet mule who wears a straw hat.In some respects, this film reminded me of "The Big Red One," which also was directed by Sam Fuller but had a lot more intensity and passion to it.Jeff Chandler and Ty Hardin were fine in the lead roles, as was Claude Atkins in a supporting one. Chandler and Atkins looked like tough, battle-scarred soldiers more than the others. Hardin has too much pretty-boy looks and voice for this role, although his acting was fine.Overall, okay, but not worth a second look.

SgtSlaughter The best way to understand a man's emotions are to look into his eyes. What does the look on his face tell you about his mood? Sam Fuller knows that. This is a movie about the faces of ordinary men in battle. What brings them joy, what makes them angry, what fatigues them. Fuller, a former soldier himself, knows how to convey these emotions in a way few filmmakers ever have been able to.In 1944, "Merrill's Marauders", a group of American volunteers, trekked across Burma to destroy several key Japanese bases. There was a legitimate fear that the Japanese would trek through Burma to India and link up with Hitler's forces in Europe. The Marauders played an important part in stopping this link-up, at great cost to their own lives.The movie makes us understand what it must have been like to be a soldier in World War II. It's important to realize that the Marauders were expecting a reprieve very early on the campaign, and were pushed far beyond normal physical and mental limitations to complete their mission. Merrill (brilliantly portrayed by Jeff Chandler) has a heart condition himself, but keeps it a secret from his men, who come to loathe him – until he collapses from a stroke, and they realize he has been pushing himself just as hard, if not harder than, his own troops.Just what causes the stress they endure? First, the death of their friends. Lt. Stockton (Ty Hardin, in one of his best performances) expresses frustration at having to write letters home to the families of the dead in his platoon. Gradually, the number of families he must write to increases. The men left under his command are trudging through several hundred miles of swamp, fearing detection by the enemy at any given moment. They are without sufficient food, infected with malaria and typhus, and lack enough medical supplies. Then have to fight off or meticulously avoid every enemy unit they encounter. By the end of the film, every man we saw at the start with a clean shirt and freshly shaven face is either dead, or wearing tattered clothes, unkempt hair and most likely wounded or exhausted from disease. These are normal men who miss their homes and families, and want to go home badly – they don't let the audience forget that, because it's almost all they talk about – and rightly so.Although some of the battle scenes seem sanitized compared to post 1965-standards (the usual fake-looking "seizure" death scenes, bloodless hand-to-hand combat), the aftermath is shockingly realistic and haunting. There is one scene in which Lt. Stockton slowly walks across a maze of concrete tank-traps, where a pitched close-quarters battle has just been fought, and sees and endless tangled mass of bodies – both American and Japanese.Fuller lets his camera linger on these moments. There is one scene where Merrill gives an order to his subordinate and Fuller keeps the camera on the officer's shocked and disappointed face for just long enough to let us start thinking about what is going inside the nameless man's head. Likewise, he makes the Philippine locations come to vivid life, especially the dark, confined sequence in the swamp. Only a few scenes set in pine forests near the end of the film look jarringly out-of-place."Merrill's Marauders" only weakness is in its almost forced jingoistic patriotism. The opening scene, a montage of documentary footage narrated by Andrew Duggan, sets us up for a flag-waving movie about American heroes single-handedly wiping out the Japanese Empire without effort, as has been seen in countless other war films. Likewise, the film's conclusion speaks of the heroism and dedication of the Marauders as if they and the entire U.S. military were immortal saints. These segments seemed tacked on, and I would bet in a minute that the military, who aided in production of the film, required that these scenes be included. Oh, yeah, and the ridiculous music score does not help much, either.Am I patriotic? Yes. Do I support the American military? Of course. Who makes a war movie web site in order to cut down war movies? I love 'em. The body of the film is about ordinary fighting men and their dedication to each other. Not to a cause. I'm sure that when men were in the trenches together during WWII (and any other war, for that matter) their primary dedication was to their buddy next to them, not for a glorious cause.I have a soft spot in my heart because Frank Merrill was my grandmother's cousin. So I have a bit of a tie to him and the history he and his men made, I suppose. That bit of prejudice doesn't change the fact that this is a great movie, and deserves a DVD release A.S.A.P.