HELLFIGHTERS [1968 / 2015] [Blu-ray] [USA Release] Only One Man Was Big Enough to Play This Role . . . JOHN WAYNE! The Toughest Hellfighter of All!
Screen legend John Wayne pays tribute to oil field legend “Red” Adair in ‘HELLFIGHTERS.’ Chance Buckman [John Wayne], is a colourful Texan who tames out-of-control infernos in exotic locations around the world. He is joined by a crew that includes Jack Lomax [Jay C. Flippen], Joe Horn [Bruce Cabot] and his assistant, Greg Parker [Jim Hutton]. Between blazes, Chance “carries the torch” for Madelyn Buckman, the wife who left him 20 years earlier because of his dangerous lifestyle. Meanwhile, Greg Parker has his hands full at the poker table and in the bedroom with Chance Buckman’s spunky daughter, Tish Buckman [Katharine Ross]. Directed by action veteran, Andrew V. McLaglen, this film features sizzling special effects and exciting locations in Texas and Wyoming.
FILM FACT: Red Adair had been fighting fires since 1946 and was well known in the industry but became more generally known in 1962 after extinguishing a Sahara Desert gas well fire called "the devil's cigarette lighter." Clair Huffaker wrote an original script which was bought by Universal in February 1967. Robert Arthur was assigned to produce. John Wayne agreed to star in November 1967. John Wayne made the film after ‘The Green Berets.’ It reteamed him with Andrew McLaglen, with whom Wayne had made ‘McLintock!’ (1963), and Jim Hutton, who had been in ‘The Green Berets.’ This was the first film for which John Wayne was paid $1 million. Unlike many of John Wayne's films around this time it was not made for his own company. Much of the filming took place in Houston, Texas and the surrounding area; headquarters for the Red Adair Company, Inc. During filming, a catering truck crashed into John Wayne's trailer while the star was inside; however, John Wayne was luckily not injured.
Cast: John Wayne, Katharine Ross, Jim Hutton, Vera Miles, Jay C. Flippen, Bruce Cabot, Edward Faulkner, Barbara Stuart, Edmund Hashim, Valentin de Vargas, Frances Fong, Alberto Morin, Alan Caillou, Laraine Stephens, John Alderson, Lal Chand Mehra, Rudy Diaz, Bebe Louie, Chris Chandler, William Hardy, Howard Finch, Richard 'Cactus' Pryor, Big John Hamilton, Elizabeth Germaine, Leon Alton (uncredited), Paul Bradley (uncredited), Edward Colmans (uncredited), Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez (uncredited), Bobby Johnson (uncredited), Kenner G. Kemp (uncredited), Leoda Richards (uncredited), Chuck Roberson (uncredited) and John Stephenson (uncredited)
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Producer: Robert Arthur
Screenplay: Clair Huffaker
Composer: Leonard Rosenman
Cinematography: William H. Clothier, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
Audio: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Spanish [Latin American]: 2.0 DTS-HD
French: 2.0 DTS-HD
German: 2.0 DTS-HD
Japanese: 2.0 DTS-HD
Português [Brazilian]: 2.0 DTS-HD
Russian: 2.0 DTS-HD
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Spanish [Latin American], Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Arabic, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Russian, Thai and Turkish
Running Time: 121 minutes
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Universal Pictures
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Adventure abounds in this rip roaring 1996 film ‘HELLFIGHTERS’ starring John Wayne, Katharine Ross and Jim Hutton. Oil-fire trouble-shooters Chance Buckman and Greg Parker have as much drama in their private lives as they do in their hazardous work, particularly when Chance Buckman's daughter marries Greg Parker.
In this old-style action film, John Wayne douses oilfield fires while trying to dampen the passion his daughter [Katharine Ross] feels for his young partner Greg Parker [Jim Hutton]. Based on the exploits of firefighter Red Adair, the film's technical adviser, it would have suited Howard Hawks; sadly, Andrew V McLaglen's effort hardly sets the world alight with its perfunctory action and tacked-on romance. Vera Miles, who was John Wayne's love interest in ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,’ here plays his ex-wife, while film aficionados buffs will spot the similarities between this and the 1998 asteroid epic film ‘Armageddon.’
The film opens with an accident at an oil well which causes it to explode into flames. Chance Buckman's secretary Irene is busy rounding up everyone in the company. Chance Buckman is on the company plane with his friend Jack Lomax on the way to the Bahamas for a celebration and gambling for New Years; George arrives by company helicopter, and Joe is called on the radiotelephone in his car. Greg Parker [Jim Hutton], Chance Buckman's second in command and known for being a lothario who invites women to the oil fires in order to bed them, has to be tracked down to the hotel room in Mexico city of his current paramour.
The team arrives at the fire in Louisiana, where a Houston television station is filming the attempt to put out the fire. When the reporter for the station attempts to interview Chance Buckman after the fire is put out, he causes an accident which injures Chance Buckman. Concern that he might not survive cause Joe Horn and Greg Parker to arrange to have Chance Buckman's daughter, Tish Buckman [Catherine Ross], flown in to see him.
Chance recovers, but is so stubborn the doctors have to keep him under sedation for a week to keep him from leaving the hospital too soon. Meanwhile Greg Parker takes the call when another fire breaks out, and Tish wants to come along since she won't be able to see her father for a week. The entire company, including Greg Parker, realising Chance Buckman wouldn't like it if Tish Buckman went and based on Greg Parker's extracurricular activities with women he invites to view fires, tells her not to come, without telling her why. She feigns an excuse of seeing a friend of hers only a hundred miles from the Fire. Tish Buckman then uses this excuse to rent a car and drive to the fire.
When Chance Buckman is fully recovered, Tish Buckman goes to see Chance Buckman in the hospital and admits that she went to see a fire with Greg Parker. Chance Buckman calls Greg Parker into the room and cold-cocks him, sputtering about Greg Parker inviting women to a fire and what he does, while handicapped in trying not to tell Tish why he's upset. Greg Parker, slumped on the floor, and then informs chance that he and Tish Buckman got married the night before, and, as Tish Buckman admits, if they hadn't seen "this lovely Cajun church, we might have waited."
Chance Buckman and Greg Parker have to meet Madeline Buckman [Vera Miles], Tish Buckman's mother and Chance's estranged ex-wife, who divorced Chance Buckman when Tish Buckman was about five, because she saw Jack Lomax break his back in a fire and end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and she couldn't live with the possibility of the same thing happening to Chance Buckman. Chance Buckman and Madeline Buckman come to the realization that Tish Buckman isn't Madeline Buckman, she has a lot of her father's qualities too, and including being able to stand the idea of the danger Greg Parker is involved in. Plus, Greg Parker and Tish Buckman are adults, there's nothing they can do about it.
After another serious fire where Greg Parker is almost killed, Chance Buckman decides to fold his company and take a job on the Board of Directors of the Lomax Oil Company, and there's a position there for Greg Parker, too. Greg Parker can't stand the idea of working in an office, and after inviting Tish into the meeting, they offer to buy the company from Chance Buckman. Chance Buckman says they can have it as a wedding present. Chance Buckman goes on to be a director at Lomax Oil, where they discuss such important issues as what colour to paint the restrooms in the company's 1,400 gas stations.
Madeline Buckman comes back to Chance Buckman now that he is no longer fighting fires. They decide to remarry, when a terrible fire in Venezuela that Greg Parker is fighting explodes into a huge multi-well disaster, which may be beyond Greg Parker's capacity to fight. Madeline admits that she understands that Chance Buckman has to go to the fire, but admits this will be the deciding point: according to Tish Buckman, this is the worst possible fire he would ever have to fight: 5 simultaneously burning oil wells, and that there never will be a worse one. Either she'll be able to stand it, or she'll break up with him again.
The final fire in the film involves Chance Buckman and Greg Parker attempting to put out a huge fire while simultaneously battling Venezuelan Army incompetence and rebel fighters. The film is also one of a very tiny number of films of the 1960s where a major character is handicapped, specifically wheelchair-bound. Jay Flippen, who plays Jack Lomax, was actually handicapped in real life.
‘HELLFIGHTERS’ again is loosely based on the life of Paul "Red" Adair, who founded his oil firefighting company in 1959. Paul "Red" Adair gained fame in 1962 when his company doused the flames of a Sahara Desert oil well fire that had burned for over five months. Paul "Red" Adair, who was one of several consultants on the making of ‘HELLFIGHTERS’ sadly passed away in 2004. A company bearing his name still provides services for "wild well control, oil well fires, and blowouts."
Blu-ray Image Quality – One can always come to expect with this Universal Pictures release, especially with this brilliant 1080p encoded transfer image. ‘HELLFIGHTERS’ looks totally perfect on this Blu-ray release. The image is very sharply defined, and the colours are bright and accurate, and only a handful of minor blemishes appear. The film has a perfect preserved the original 2.35:1 widescreen Panavision presentation, and I was surprised to see how wide the transfer was with ‘HELLFIGHTERS’ that normally clocked in with an approx. 2.45:1 aspect ratio. Some of you might be hesitant about the accuracy of this slightly wider-than-normal aspect ratio, but as far as I can tell, the framing appears to be correct. As the film runs a scant one minute over two hours, it is really action packed from start to finish with stunning explosive images that will take your breath away with some of the awesome fire explosions they have to battle to control and the way they have to put the fires out, better them than me.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – The audio tracks contains a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack; the sound is very clean, and the surround encoding is generally employed only for the musical score, and for a 1968 film it is still a powerful soundtrack. And as an extra bonus especially when it comes to the powerful explosions that happen throughout the film, but even better is when all of your speakers start working overtime, especially when you really feel the explosive force, especially near the end of the film that is set in Venezuela. So total top marks for a brilliant sound experience, and make sure your neighbours are not around when you want to crank up the sound.
Blu-ray Special Features and Extras: Sadly Universal Pictures decided it was not worth adding any special features or extras, despite this there must be in their vaults interviews with the cast and crew, behind-the-scene filming and deleted scenes.
Finally, this is a very exciting and entertaining film and co-staring Jim Hutton, Katherine Ross and Vera Miles. Some of the acting of Jim Hutton and Katherine Ross may have been less than one would expect. But the film should be seen keeping in mind that this was years before the start of the modern day disaster films especially of the early seventies like ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and ‘The Towering Inferno.’ It is really fun to watch as Chance Buckman's crew travels the world putting out oil well fires while kindling a few fires of their own in the local women. It is fun to watch many of the fire-fighting scenes today and wonder how they pulled this off thirty years ago. It is very John Wayne as can be seen as some of his regulars turn up here, such as Bruce Cabot, Edward Faulkner who was part of his stable. This film at the time was so visually stunning that “Popular Mechanics” publication 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. Watch it and really enjoy the ultimate excitement. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
