Beachhead **** (1954, Tony Curtis, Frank Lovejoy, Mary Murphy, Eduard Franz) – Classic Movie Review 5491

Director Stuart Heisler’s gritty, extremely decent little 1954 wartime action thriller unusually has a speaking cast of only seven, with just one woman – Tony Curtis, Frank Lovejoy, Mary Murphy, Eduard Franz, Skip Homeier, John Doucette and Alan Wells.

Four marines are sent to a Japanese-held Pacific island on a dangerous World War Two mission to recover safely a French plantation owner spy (Franz). Curtis and Lovejoy both fancy the planter’s daughter Murphy, who sprains her ankle and sets back the mission.

Heisler’s tense direction, Richard Alan Simmons’s intelligent, aware and nuanced screenplay (based on novel I’ve Got Mine by Richard G Hubler) and Hawaiian jungle filming on location produce an unexpectedly exciting movie, way out of the rut.

The acting is more modest, but very acceptable, with Curtis scoring strongly, though the ship-fight trick work is really poor, betraying an otherwise fine venture. However, Gordon Avil’s realist cinematography is a major asset.

Curtis, who had fought in the Pacific in World War Two, recalled: ‘It was a very intense experience for me because it hit close to home and my own reality.’

For the record, Akira Fukunaga appears as Terrified Japanese Sailor, Dan Aoki is a Japanese Sniper and Steamboat Mokuahi is Malanesian, Island native. 

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5491

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