Customer Reviews

Hell to Eternity

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most movies about the Second World War either deal with brave men performing heroically as expected or less heroic men doing the unexpected. In HELL TO ETERNITY the focus is on a man who is neither brave nor cowardly. He is no Henry Fleming dreaming of great exploits. Rather he is a man driven by hate for the same people whom earlier he had once called his own. He is Guy Gabaldon, a real life U. S. Marine who won several decorations for valor fighting the Japanese on Saipan.
The movie begins with Gabaldon as a boy living in a troubled street in Los Angeles. He is homeless, friendless, and more than a little filled with rage at a world that has no place for a poor boy of mixed Hispanic origin. A Japanese family sees worth in him, and much as Don Corleone did with Tom Hagen in THE GODFATHER, agree to take him in and raise him as one of their own. The adult Gabaldon is played by Jeffrey Hunter, who has the uneviable task of playing Gabaldon at varying times in a psychologically varying condition. Gabaldon learns to speak fluent Japanese and his face beams with delight as he addresses his adopted matriarch as 'Mama-san.' Life in the United States is indeed sweet, at least until Pearl Harbor, when he is swept up into the maelstrom of war. He does not relish the thought of fighting his adopted people, and he suffers greatly from the image of shooting at Japanese soldiers. During his initial introduction to training, he is befriended by a pre-Fugitive David Janssen, who shows him the ropes of being a soldier. Gabaldon learns to count on Janssen as a soldier, a friend, savior. During a vicious battle, Gabaldon sees Janssen gunned down right in front of him, and at that point, his world view is turned upside down. He now hates the Japanese with a ferocity that amazes even his friends. He uses his fluency in Japanese to lure them out of their lairs, and he guns them down by the hundreds. His hate drives him on until he meets a Japanese officer played by the immensely dignified Sessue Hayakawa, whose personal bravery restores Gabaldon's emotional equilibrium.
HELL TO ETERNITY is the rare war movie whose focus on killing is not to showcase either the fighting skills of the individual soldier or to build a national sense of patriotism and warlike fervor. Instead, director Phil Karlson uses the confusing images of war to mirror the equally confusing turmoil of one man who is called on to shift mental gears once too often.

Hell to Eternity depicts an unconventional manner of battling the enemy. A young Marine utilizes his foreign language skills in Japanese that he learned from his adopted family to influence and convince the enemy to surrender. This is a great WWII movie that shows a humanistic point of view of the war in the South Pacific.
This movie was insipred by a real-life Marine, Guy Gabaldon , a Mexican-American Marine from East Los Angeles. PFC Gabaldon " Maverick Marine" was credited with the capture of 1500 Japanese soldiers. He was initially awarded the Silver Star then later upgraded to the Navy Cross. Efforts have been made to petion for him to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
More interesting reading can be found in Guy Gabaldon's autobiography book "Saipan, Suicide Island".

This is the story of Guy Gabaldon, an Hispanic juvenile, who is "adopted" by a Japanese family in Los Angeles before WW2. Growing up he learns to love and respect his "parents", their lifestyle, and to speak their language. When the family is sent off to an internment camp, Guy joins the Marine Corps. He is torn between the love of his parents and love of country. During the battle of Saipan he convinces hundreds of Japanese soldiers to surrender thus saving many lives, both Marines and Japanese. Based on the true life actions of Marine Hero Guy Gabaldon. Pretty good story and worth watching.

Hell to eternity is a touching film, Jeffrey Hunter plays a young man with a poor home life who is adopted by a Japanese family prior to WWII. He is surrounded by people decrying the "japs" and endures a struggle of conscience. The only goodness and kindness he has ever experienced in his life was the gift of this Japanese family. His adopted family is placed in a relocation camp and his adopted brother proudly goes off to fight for the U.S. but he is left to struggle with his identity. He eventually does go to fight for the U.S. It is nice to see a different perspective, not all "Japs" are bad, war is never easy and a person must make a moral choice.

This is a fantastic movie and I'm so glad it's finally seeing the light of the day on DVD. I'm a bit biased however, as Guy Gabaldon is my grandfather's brother. With that being said, I want to clear something up stated by a couple other reviewers. Guy Gabaldon was not Mexcan- American, he's Spanish American...his family is 100% Spanish. That takes nothing away from him being a great American hero as this movie shows, I just wanted to get the facts straight.

I've seen this movie many years ago and it rates up there with movies like "Sands of Iwo Jima" and "Green Baret" just to name a few. If your a war movie buff-It's a MUST see movie. Hopefully, it will be released on DVD soon.

This movie has not withstood the test of time, but still offers an insight into one American's experience growing up with Japanese Americans and then using his LA Japanese to face Imperial Japanese forces on Saipan. This DVD could be made much more effectively if it had film of the real Guy Gabaldon, who died recently. Of course, that would ruin the fantasy-story Hollywood created around him. A simple man, who fought an enemy, tried to talk them into surrendering, but shot them dead if they did not. Not much romance in that, but, it was war.

I saw this movie in my hometown theatre in 1960 on a double bill with the Audie Murphy movie To Hell And Back.

It cost me twenty cents.

I was seven years old at the time and got so hyped I sat through two showings of each.

I just recently moved back to my hometown and was riding through town one day looking at the delapidated theatre and this movie sprung to mind and I started searching all over for it but couldn't find it but here it is at last 2 years later.

As others have said this is not a conventional war movie but a moving story of a man going through more emotional trauma than anyone should have to endure.

The scene toward the end of the movie where the Japanese are commiting suicide off the cliffs was a scene that stuck with me through all these years.

War truely is hell.

The scene where the little girl staggers out of the cave after a grenade is thrown in to flush out the Japanese soldiers was, according to Guy Gabaldon, a pivotal moment in his life. And it was a real-life event as the "Lone Wolf Marine" on Saipan. I should know because I was the child actor who portrayed the little girl shown on the VHS cover, and Guy was my coach.
It might help you to know that Guy approved of the movie and had no qualms about Jeffrey Hunter portraying an Italian American as himself. He was proud of the movie and proud of being a Marine.
Many years later when I looked him up and got to meet him and his beloved wife, he spoke of how the tragic death of that little girl on Saipan touched his heart and began to allow something mysterious to happen. He said that as she died, he prayed for her and felt God's presence.
That incident, along with the horrific sight and sounds of women and children being thrown or jumping to their deaths from the cliffs of Saipan, convinced him that in spite of military orders and strategies which were not working very well, (he was always "thinking outside the box"), there had to be a way to save civilians, as well as his fellow Marine and enemies' lives. And that is what he did as the "Pied Piper of Saipan, capturing over 800 enemy soldiers alive and marching them single-handedly as POW's.
This movie is worth watching simply because it is a true one about an American boy who embarks on the classic "Hero's Journey".

This movie is about an American in the Pacific War. This American has a special history or relationship with the Japanese, and his adoption by a good Japanese-American family, the effect of Pearl Harbor on himself and that family, and his experience of the Japanese he has both lived-with and had to fight against on Saipan Island battle are what make this above-average Pacific-war saga based on US Marine Guy Gabaldons personal story and war experience a little different from the run of the mill genre. Good supporting-cast with David Jansen, his gambling and broads loving buddy whose luck runs out finally on Saipan, sadly.
This man Guy Gabaldon would proudly agree with my description of him as an American, Im pretty-confidant.This movie is about Americans and Japanese,
its not about Germans, or Polish people,
or Swedes, or Russians,
or Italians,
or British or Irish or even, would you believe,and this may be more than you can handle, but its not about wonderful Spanish or Mexican people, or modern race-politics in the US and trivial PC touchiness, its about an American Marine and the Japanese.
I tell you this as a non-American myself, if I can see it, so should practically anybody else.