Battle Taxi

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.