Battle Taxi (1955) User Reviews

Only really ruined by editing

[shoobe01-1 · 6/10 · 5 March 2022]

The kind of thing I'd love to hear the back story on. When allowed to happen, perfectly well acted, good story, great realism (not the hardware, but Art 15 for screwing up, yelled at by superiors over paperwork...) and well enough scripted.

Also yes, AMAZING access to military equipment, including current helicopters. And then... they wasted much of it. Long sequences of stock montages for no reason, they even ran the film backwards during a flying scene, rather obviously.

Also photographed pretty boringly. Overall decent, could have been good to great. Wasted opportunity but still a must see for helicopter nerds.

For Those Who Remember "The Early Show" or "Movie 4", before Local News Took Over The Time Slot

[rusher-3 · 6/10 · 14 February 2022]

This film was a mainstay of late-afternoon television in the NYC area in the late-fifties, early-sixties, having been shown at least a half-dozen times or more. As an early teen at the time, I enjoyed watching it, especially after having built a Revell model of the Sikorsky helicopter featured so prominently. The brief sequences of jet fighters flying overhead just made it all the more entertaining to my young eyes. In those days, America could do no wrong, but regrettably, we would soon learn otherwise.

Generic.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 14 May 2015]

Herbert L. Strock -- a name to conjure with. He directed this undistinguished introduction to the helicopter air rescue teams in the Korean war.

It's almost like a training camp film. In fact, the audience joins a group of jet jocks as they sit and watch a film about the operations and instruments of air/sea rescue. Lots of pretty good shots of airplanes taking off, landing, and helicopters spinning around and emitting smoke. But Herbert L. Strock, I think, underestimates the perspicacity of the audience. A "chopper" whirls in for a landing, nicely done. Then there is an obvious cut and splice, and the helicopter flies BACKWARDS along the same approach route. Well, maybe a child would miss it.

The central theme is familiar. Arthur Franz is a jet pilot with some training in helicopters, and he's assigned to Captain Sterling Hayden's rescue unit in Korea. Franz is impatient and angry because he wants to climb into a jet and clobber those Commies, not fly slowly around in an unarmed Sikorsky H-19 Chickasaw, retrieving downed flyers. You may find a similar conflict between Dana Andres and Tyrone Power in "Crash Dive." Actually, those models were loud and underpowered compared to, say, the famous Huey of Vietnam, but they were spacious and comfy. I caught a ride in one when I was stationed at the USCG Air Station at San Francisco International Airport. Perfect for scenic air tours of the Bay Area, if not for clobbering Commies.

Herbert J. Strock's direction comes on like a ton of bricks. Lots of shouting. The script lacks some of the usual elements of these genre films. Cherchez la femme? Not even a girl friend back home? I must say, though, that the story is both informative and at times even gripping, especially the final scene when Franz is lying on the ground, wounded, with a medical team trying to get him into shape for evacuation, and North Korean mortar shells are being walked into their position. Another combat scene in which an unarmed helicopter attacks a tank is more amusing than anything else.

There are only two real performances -- Hayden's and Franz's. They're professionally competent. Both men are from New Jersey. I mused, during the duller parts, about whether they reminisced about going to "the shore" in the summer.

Stock Footage and Stock Characters and Thrilling Helicopter Action

[alonzoiii-1 · 3/10 · 25 August 2009]

Rough tough, phone in the performance and cash the paycheck Captain Sterling Hayden commands a fleet of helicopters in the Korean War. Can he keep his BATTLE TAXIS in the air rescuing shot down pilots, or will re-purposed hot shot pilot Arthur Franz keep flying the copters into unnecessary danger?

If you want character driven drama, any sense of suspense, or performances you'll remember five minutes after "The End", this is not the movie for you. If you want camp, atrocious dialog, and amazing overacting, this also is not the film for you. But, if you love watching spliced bits of stock footage, newsreel stuff, and endless shots of helicopters and jet fighters in the midst of not so exciting action, this is your movie. Heck, this flick even has Hayden and Franz show a group of hot shot pilots a movie full of stock footage, newsreel stuff and helicopters, just to get all that stuff that had been rotting at the stock company's shelves in.

The performances are pretty dull -- but in fairness to the actors, there is so much footage from other sources, they don't have much time to develop their characters beyond the desired stereotypes. The script is pretty dreary as well, with only one moment of actual originality appearing two-thirds of the way. But if you enjoy looking at old helicopters and jets, this is actually a pretty valuable film.

Amazingly dull.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 28 November 2010]

Sterling Hayden, a very good and underrated actor, plays a grouchy captain whose one and only goal is to keep his rescue helicopters flying. However, he has a hot-shot new pilot (Arthur Franz) who has ideas of taking wild risks and it puts him in the hot seat with Hayden. Through the course of the movie, time and again, Hayden's slow and steady mentality turns out to be the right one and Franz learns to be more of a team player.

Throughout way too much of the movie, the film makers uses TONS of stock footage--too much. It's as if half the film is stock footage. Fortuantely, while a lot of the footage is irrelevant, at least it's high quality and of the correct sorts of planes and equipment. But as a result, the whole thing comes off as cheap and a bit dull. Frankly, I wanted to see more of Hayden's grumpy but entertaining performance---though at times the dialog he and the rest of the cast were given was pretty bad.

I am a huge airplane buff, so I enjoyed seeing the A-26s, B-29s and F-86 but not much more piqued my interest. While there weren't that many Korean War films, you could easily do better with better low budget films like Samuel Fuller's "Steel Helmet" or "Fixed Bayonets". All in all, a boring film due to crap production values.

Wrong in every way

[Bush_Pilot · 3 October 2014]

Everything about this movie is wrong.... or just plain bad.

From the writing, directing, choice of stock footage, etc.... the dialog stunk to high heaven. The editor of the stock footage even screwed that up by showing a few seconds of a jet about to start, then the blades revolving as a big radial on a B-29 started to turn followed immediately by the blast of a jet tailpipe as it begins to taxi..... I can't go on. This has to be at or very near the top of the list of really bad war movies of all time. Close ground support by jets instead of the prop jobs that actually did it held over from WWII. Huge formations of aircraft fly over constantly as though at a big air show, which is probably where most of the stock footage came from. Just awful.

Very much run of the mill.

[plan99 · 5/10 · 26 November 2023]

Very similar to other war films of this type where a "rebel" is eventually turned into one of the more regular guys via a few heroic acts of course. The usual love interest was missing and I had expected to see a few pretty nurses here and there for added complications.

The stock footage was poor with some of it being very well known WWII footage, the soldiers on the railway line and the plane attacking a bridge for example.

It could have been, and should have been, a lot better than it was considering the assistance they had from the real rescue service which was largely wasted.

Not worth watching except by those with an interest in helicopters.

OK, so it's not the Korean-War equivalent of "Grand Illusion"

[Dr_FIcta · 7/10 · 25 September 2019]

No doubt, the film contains more than its share of deficiencies, which have been amply pointed out in previous reviews of this title. But we have to remember that it was probably shot on a minuscule budget, and most likely in a heluva hurry, for the war had been over for at least a year before it got released. For me, "Battle Taxi" rates 4-5 for cinematic quality, but as a document of aviation history it's at least an 8, and for sentimental value (for me), it's off the charts. Along with Richard Widmark's "Hell and High Water," this was my favorite movie back around 1958, when I was four years old. My old man was an Air Force fighter jock at that time, having flown F-80s in Korea, now stationed at Hamilton Field north of San Francisco, flying F-86s. For whatever reason, I absolutely loved helicopters, especially the H-19, and a Chickasaw pilot lived on the same street as we did in Novato. One of my earliest memories is of being invited out to the base to see a real H-19, and actually getting to SIT IN THE COCKPIT, while my brother and cousins had to stand below in the cargo bay. I hadn't seen this film in at least 30 years when it showed up on TCM around 2005. Yet I remembered it in almost every detail, especially the "truck gas" episode. Seeing it again was a priceless time-warp experience. PS: for any H-19 fans out there, floating around YT is a 25-minute Army training film about pre-flight inspection of the Chickasaw. I would have given my last toy revolver back in 1958 to have seen that!

Great Movie

[zchicco · 8/10 · 21 May 2007]

A very good movie for all the aviation buffs : it can easily be considered as the "Sikorsky H-19 " helicopter definitive film. Then , there are a lot of good old Sabres and Shooting Stars, some S-51 Hely and other USAF stuff of the period(F-51 , B-45, B-29, Hu-16) . Haiden was a super actor and Franz did his best. A must for all the Hely lovers and aviation fans. Typical production of the early fifties, mainly done to promote Air Force and to give an idea of the hard work usually done by the Air Rescue Service men. The aviation movies regarding the Korean conflict are usually full of North American F-86 Sabres and are the vehicle for daring and handsome Fighter Pilots. This B movie is an honest one mainly produced to inform people of the obscure and dangerous work the SAR people performed and still do in saving life of pilots.