Hellfighters

Exciting adventure (re-made years later as ARMAGEDDON with Bruce Willis and re-set in outer space) with John Wayne as a successful contractor to oil companies. He's successful because his job is a very dangerous one: Drill into oil fields that are on fire, set explosives into the heart oil field fires, and cause them to lose oxygen. This job description has caused his wife to divorce him. John Wayne's top employee is young hot shot Jim Hutton, who John Wayne sees as someday taking over the company. Jim Hutton and John Wayne's daughter, Katharine Ross, are in love and want to get married, but John Wayne wants nothing of it. He doesn't want his daughter to suffer the same stress his own wife suffered, wondering if her husband would live through another dangerous assignment. Unlike ARMAGEDDON in which we never explore Bruce Willis' marriage we actually get to see John Wayne's wife, Vera Miles and listen to her concerns (the divorce was more than just because he had a dangerous job). The climax of the film centers around a government contract that sends the crew into the middle of a war where aircraft is blowing up oil fields as John Wayne and company are trying to put the fires out. Will John Wayne allow Jim Hutton to marry Katharine Ross? Will John Wayne get back together with Vera Miles? Will John Wayne and Jim Hutton blow themselves up in a fire ball or be blown apart my the aerial attacks? If you loved ARMAGEDDON check out the film that started it all.

Loosely based on the exploits of Red Adair, Hellfighters is a perfect vehicle for John Wayne. The characterizations are a bit overstated, but this was standard for the era, so I allow for that. And who could have picked a more appropriate love interest for the Duke than Vera Miles as a San Francisco Department Store heiress.

I thought Jim Hutton and Katherine Ross made a good offsetting couple to JW & VM and Bruce Cabot, a long-time associate of Wayne's, an excellent comic element.

I think the thing that sold it for me was the reality of the fire scenes which I just marveled at until I saw that Red Adair was a technical adviser on the film. That and the knowledge that Wayne was all for reality as much as possible really made me a watch it anytime fan of this picture.

If one takes into account the decade in which the picture was made, it can be and is, for me at least, a very enjoyable film. I highly recommend it!

When I first saw "Hellfighters" I was only about 13 years old. The movie certainly captivated me, in part because it seemed so realistic. Also, the slogan of the Buckman Company really appealed to me. "Around the world, around the clock." This was a story about someone who really went the distance to help people.

This movie was so visually stunning that Popular Mechanics ran a cover story on the special effects, describing how a mixture of propane and diesel oil was used to make the fires, which were fed by underground pipes. It also explained that Red Adair really did use explosives to put out oil well fires, which many people found hard to believe.

This was a highly believable, present day performance by John Wayne, which is somewhat special in and of itself. There was only one brawl, which was all good fun, and we even get to see Mr. Wayne get a face full of what looks kind of like oil. (It was dyed water.) There is no heavy, moralistic message to this film, a minimum of flag waving, and watching it is just plain fun.

Sandwiched in between the critical beating John Wayne took for The Green Berets and a bunch of westerns culminating in his Oscar performance for True Grit is this little known film he did about a group of men fighting oil fires, a truly dangerous profession. The Hellfighters has the look and feel of a Wayne family effort with it being produced by Batjac and having in its cast Wayne regulars like Edward Faulkner and Bruce Cabot. I wonder where son Patrick was.

A little over 20 years after Hellfighters came out, the person that Wayne's character was based on, Red Adair came into prominence when he took on the Herculean task of putting out all those oil fires that Saddam Hussein started in Kuwait when he fled that country. Turns out the biggest assignment Adair had was way in his future in 1968.

I'm sure Red Adair must have been flattered all to heck when the biggest box office draw in cinema history was portraying a facsimile of him on the screen. Who knows though maybe Red Adair's real story and real name on the screen might be good entertainment. Might be a great subject for a film now, what with all the new computer generated special effects that could be used.

Though the film is based on Adair's exploits, it is first and foremost a John Wayne film. He's not Red Adair on the screen, it's the Duke that all of us have come to know. Wayne and his cast put together a nice action filled film with a minor subplot about his family life. Vera Miles plays his estranged wife, Katharine Ross his daughter, and Jim Hutton a protégé Wayne is grooming to take over his company.

This was Wayne's third film with Vera Miles and twice before he didn't wind up with her, either in The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Third time the charm.

Hellfighters also is an example of Wayne's well known generosity to his fellow players. When he liked you he was the best friend you could have. Jay C. Flippen who plays an oil executive lost a leg to diabetes a year or two before. Wayne gave him that extra pay day by casting him in Hellfighters in a wheelchair. I could cite a lot of other examples of him helping people by doing that in other films.

Hellfighters is an enjoyable two hours of Wayne in modern dress, battling the elements like he did in The High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky instead of bad guys. There is one sequence where he and his crew were battling an oil fire in Venezuela with some rebels shooting at them. Since it's the Duke, you kind of expect him to pick up a rifle and blow them all away.

Though Hellfighters is a good, not a great film, I'd still like to see the real Red Adair story on screen.

My ex-husband was a huge John Wayne fan and had me watch every JW movie over and over. This was my favorite. The acting and script are not the point of watching this movie. The attitudes, clothes(especially the women's), and the sets are Soooo Sixties. My favorite thing is the "window" in the office. If you look closely you can see it isn't a window at all, it is a miniature of a highway(like a miniature railroad), but it is supposed to look like the view out the "window". I'm sure that was state-of-the-art in the late 60's. Katherine Ross is fabulous and wears the best clothes. Jim Hutton is quite handsome. John Wayne acts like....John Wayne. If you're a JW fan you'll recognize most of the cast. Great fun!!!!