THE NAKED AND THE DEAD (1958)

In a Honolulu bar in 1943, Sgt. Croft (Aldo Ray), the leader of a U.S Army platoon, sits apart from his men as a strip show is about to start. Croft is talked about as a good soldier but not an easy man to know or like. As it happens, the stripper is the object of the lust of the manic (and probably horny) Lt. Wilson—they "knew" each other back in the States—but just as the show starts, it's raided and the military men all quickly leave. The platoon ships out as part of an effort headed by General Cummings (Raymond Massey) to reverse a deadly trend and start taking back some important Pacific islands from the Japanese. We see the apparently unfeeling Croft kill a Japanese prisoner after he's taken important papers from him; then he sets out to gun down a group of stripped-down Japanese prisoners until Cummings's assistant Lt. Hearn (Cliff Robertson) stops him. The stage is now set for the main personal conflicts: Cummings, who is proud of the fact that he can usually predict how many soldiers will be killed in any one mission, is a believer is instilling fear in his men as a way of using power; Hearn, younger and greener, thinks that gaining respect is more important than using fear; Croft is a near-psychopathic sadist whose men have a measure of respect for his battleground skills but don't respect him as a man.

Though there a few battle sequences, the bulk of this movie, based on Norman Mailer's well-regarded novel, is devoted to the clash of the American soldiers. In the way of 1950s movies, we are given some simplistic psychological backgrounds to help explain the men: Croft married the woman he was in love with, but caught her cheating on him, a trauma he has never gotten over; Cummings may have a sexual dysfunction involving impotence or possibly homosexuality; Hearn, the least damaged of the three, was a bit of a playboy but is otherwise a thoughtful and humane man who respectfully disagrees with Cummings' outlook on power. The other characters who get caught in the psychological crossfire are played by Richard Jaeckel, James Best, William Campbell, Robert Gist, L.Q. Jones (as the aforementioned Wilson) and the unlikely duo of Jerry Paris (next-door neighbor Jerry Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show) and comedian Joey Bishop as the new guys, both Jewish. Many critics were disappointed in this movie because it couldn't match up to the novel, infamous for its obscene language (and for Mailer's euphemistic use of "fug" for another obscenity starting with "F"), but I haven't read the book, and taken on its own terms, it's a fairly average war film. Ray (pictured with Robertson) gives the best performance, with Jones and Gist leading the support. Robertson is fine but colorless, and Massey is a bit over-the-top. It's way too long; the first 45 minutes, getting to know the men and their conflicts, are engrossing, but doldrums set in as the men go to battle, and the last half-hour, despite some good moments, drags. Still, it doesn't deserve to be forgotten just because it's not as powerful as its source material. [TCM]