Now that I've seen Hell's Heroes

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned that Hell's Heroes, the first sound version of Three Godfathers, was going to be on TCM. I hadn't seen it before, so I was curious to see how it compared to the other versions.

To be honest, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The basic synopsis of the plot is here from when I blogged about the mid-1930s version of Three Godfathers, although there are some slight differences. The biggest one is that the woman was only about to give birth in Hell's Heroes, while she had already given birth in Three Godfathers. It led to some childcare stuff that I don't quite remember being in the later movie.

For the most part, though, it seemed to be fairly similar. I haven't read the Peter Kyne story, so I can't comment on how similar the movies are to the story, but the version used in the movies is good. Charles Bickford does a good job as the lead of Hell's Heroes, while everybody else is satisfactory if not particularly memorable. The Mojave Desert cinematography is also good. All in all, while Hell's Heroes is not an all-time classic, it's certainly a solid telling of a good story.

The Warner Archive released a double bill of Hell's Heroes and the 1936 Three Godfathers.