Mill Creek Entertainment Tabs May 4 As The Street Date For Both DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of Director Andrew V. McLaglen's Hellfighters

Mill Creek Entertainment announced this past week that May 4 will be the street date for both Blu-ray and DVD editions of director Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1968 thriller, Hellfighters, starring John Wayne, Katharine Ross, Vera Miles and Jim Hutton.

Of course, it is John Wayne that packed them in, but the film owes much to filmmaker Andrew V. McLaglen, one of the most underrated directors from Hollywood’s old school.   Given a budget and a schedule, he would find a way to get it done … his list of credits as a filmmaker include the likes of McLintock!, Shenandoah, The Way West, Cahill U.S. Marshal, The Wild Geese and even Monkeys, Go Home!.

Plus, McLaglen was a mainstay on the set of Gunsmoke, directing a whopping 96 episodes of this venerable Western television series.   He, like his contemporary, Don Siegel — a director who would mentor Clint Eastwood — knew the craft inside and out, which means he didn’t need 17 takes to get the shot he wanted.

Everything was thrown at him in the production of Hellfighters.   Scheduled exterior sequences had to be moved around when a monster storm descended on Houston … did he pack up and move everyone to a sound stage in Hollywood?   Hell no, he rented a warehouse, tented it and shot interiors while the storm raged outside. 

This is a movie about oil field firefighters and McLaglen had the best advisors on-set as possible, including the legendary “Red” Adair (whose life is the backdrop for the film itself), but right in the middle of shooting, Adair and his crew get not one, but two critical emergency calls.  They had to abandon the production to fight two life-and-death oil field fires ... just like the movie, and McLaglen didn’t panic, didn’t miss a beat, he soldiered-on and got it done!

Hellfighters, something of an atypical John Wayne film, was a huge theatrical success.  Peppered with a strong supporting cast that included Jay C. Flippen and Bruce Cabot, plus relative newcomer Katharine Ross — who had just come off of her Oscar-nominated performance in The Graduate — and, veterans Vera Miles and Jim Hutton, all under the sure-handed direction of Andrew V. McLaglen.  Even with hell itself thrown at the production, it came off seamlessly (the “magic” of “Hollywood”).

 

 

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