Fixed Bayonets!

A war film set in the Korean War. An American division is withdrawing. A small platoon is left behind, tasked with holding a pass and giving the enemy the impression that a whole unit is still there. Bluff is all they have. At the centre is Corporal Denno. He is a good soldier with one problem: he cannot fire on a man. As the chain of command thins out, command moves closer to him, and he knows he cannot do it. The narrative does not go to the big scenes of war. Almost all of it takes place in snow, in a narrow space; the soldiers work at not freezing, pull men out of a minefield and die one by one. Samuel Fuller directed and came out of his own military service, which shows in the detail: frostbite, the question of boots, the problem of hot food. Richard Basehart plays Denno and Gene Evans the sergeant. James Dean appears very briefly near the end, uncredited. One of the genre's little-known good examples for anyone who likes war cinema and Fuller's direct storytelling. For a viewer expecting large-scale combat, the film proceeds in a small space, with few people, and almost entirely by waiting.