Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Hellfighters (Mill Creek Entertainment) Blu-ray Review

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Hellfighters (Mill Creek Entertainment) Blu-ray Review



    Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
    Released on: May 4th, 2021.
    Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
    Cast: John Wayne, Katharine Ross, Jim Hutton, Vera Miles, Jay C. Flippen
    Year: 1968
    Purchase From Amazon

    Hellfighters - Movie Review:

    Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and released to theaters in 1968, Hellfighters top bills John Wagne as Chance Buckman, a tough as nails Texan whose job is to put out fires when they start to get out of control at some of the more remote oil rig locations used by the company that employs him. Chance doesn't do all of this work by himself, however. He's got equally tough guys like Jack Lomax (Jay C. Flippen), Joe Horn (Bruce Cabot) and Greg Parker (Jim Hutton) by his side every step of the way.

    Chance has also been divorced for a couple of decades now, and then end of his marriage still weighs heavy on his heart. When he isn't putting out ridiculously dangerous oil rig fires, he's trying to win back Madelyn (Vera Miles), the ex-wife that he just can't seem to get over. She divorced him way back when not because she didn't love him, but because the constant dangers inherent in his job just became too much for her to deal with all of the time.

    As their stories play out, things get complicated when Greg winds up getting romantically involved with Tish (Katharine Ross), Chance's daughter. As Chance tries to take a desk job and settle down after getting injured on the job, it looks like he and Madelyn just might make it after all, that is until a giant fire breaks out at an oil rig in Venezuela.

    Hellfighters is two-hours of solid entertainment. Some of the acting from the supporting players is less than perfect and you won't have any trouble figuring out how all of this is going to end, but McLaglen, the man who gave us The Wild Geese and the Joe Don Baker classic Mitchell, paces the film well and does a great job of making the firefighting scenes seem believably exciting and incredibly dangerous. Made in the day and age where you had to stage scenes like these using only practical effects, it's impressive to some of the massive fireballs that the effects team conjure up for this picture, they look way cooler and much more realistic than a lot of similar computer generated effects used in modern movies. These scenes are the highlights of the picture, and are far more memorable than the rather pedestrian dramatic and romantic subplots (though to be fair, those subplots are effective at stringing together the different action set pieces).


    Wayne is pretty good in the lead and he has a decent enough chemistry with Miles in this picture to make their relationship work, despite some obvious clichés evident in how it all plays out. Production values are good pretty much across the board, and the film features some nice camerawork and a pretty rousing score that does a nice job of making the action scenes more tense, and subsequently making some of the scenes of drama and romance a little hokier than they should be. Overall, this is an uneven film, but a pretty entertaining one.

    Hellfighters - Blu-ray Review:

    Hellfighters arrives on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen taking up 21GBs of space on a 25GB disc. This looks to have come from an older master so it isn't reference quality but it is quite good. Detail is pretty strong if not at the level a new scan could have provided, while color reproduction looks quite strong. There are some minor compression artifacts in some of the darker scenes but you probably won't notice them if you aren't looking for them. Black levels are good and there are no issues with any noise reduction or edge enhancement.

    The 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track is in English. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. Sound quality is fine, the levels are balanced and the dialogue stays clear. There could have been maybe a bit more depth to some of the action scenes but the score sounds solid. No problems to report.

    There are no extra features included on this disc, just a static menu.

    Hellfighters - The Final Word:

    Hellfighters may have some flaws but it's still a pretty entertaining way to spend two-hours. Wayne is in fine form here and a lot of fun to watch, and the firefighting scenes are really impressively staged. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is barebones, but it looks decent and sounds quite good and, as is typical with the label's output, it's hard to argue with the price.

    Click on the images below for full sized Hellfighters Blu-ray screen caps!






























    • Andrew Monroe
      #1
      Andrew Monroe
      Pallid Hands
      Andrew Monroe commented
      Editing a comment
      I've got the old Universal BD, this is probably the same. I like this film, mainly due to the cast. It's fun to see Wayne and long time co-stars Bruce Cabot and Jay C. Flippen. As you say, it's kind of uneven (and probably a bit too long), but the firefighting scenes are done well.
    Posting comments is disabled.

Latest Articles

Collapse

  • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Severin Films
    Released on: April 30th, 2024.
    Director: Lee Frost
    Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
    Year: 1969
    Purchase From Amazon

    Hot Spur – Movie Review:

    Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
  • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Mondo Macabro
    Released on: April 9th, 2024.
    Director: Max Pecas
    Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
    Year: 1985
    Purchase From Amazon

    Death Squad – Movie Review:

    Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
  • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Quality X
    Released on: February 28th, 2024.
    Director: Chuck Vincent
    Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
    Year: 1982
    Purchase From Amazon

    Roommates – Movie Review:

    Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
  • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Blue Underground
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Jess Franco
    Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
    Year: 1970
    Purchase From Amazon

    Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

    Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
  • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Saul Bass
    Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
    Year: 1974
    Purchase From Amazon

    Phase IV – Movie Review:

    Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
  • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Radiance Films
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
    Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
    Year: 1969-1972
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

    Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
    ...
    03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
Working...
X