Tarawa Beachhead

TCM did a night of Julie Adams movies some time back. I could have sworn that I recently did a post on one of the other movies that night, although as it turns out that movie is going to be coming up some time later, on the Elvis Presley movie Tickle Me. I've got a different Elvis movie to do a post on since it's coming up on TCM later in the month. In any case, today's post is on a movie I hadn't heard of until TCM ran it the last time: Tarawa Beachhead.

Julie Adams is nominally the female lead here, although she's got a smaller role and doesn't show up until later in the movie since, as you might have guessed from the title, men are the main characters here. The movie opens with the battle for Guadalcanal back in 1942. A platoon of American marines under the command of Lt. Joel Brady (Ray Danton) is storming the island, although they face stiff resistance since the Japanese are hiding in caves on the island. Sgt. Tom Sloan (Kerwin Mathews) thinks a frontal attack on the Japanese is ill-advised, and he's right. When Brady tries just such an attack, the platoon is devastated, with only Brady, Sloan, and one other soldier, Pvt. Campbell, surviving. Worse, Brady shoots Campbell dead, in the back no less, when Campbell runs in horror.

Brady, for obvious reasons, doesn't want news of this to get out, and tries to threaten Sloan not to say anything about it. Back at base, when it's time for the debriefing, Brady tries a different tactic, suggesting that Sloan should be promoted for heroism. Sloan does indeed get promoted and gets sent to a different outfit under a general down in New Zealand away from the action. He doesn't get the chance to tell the truth about what happened, and since he didn't do it immediately, there are going to be questions about it if he does come clean later. But he's still planning on trying to make certain that the truth comes out and Lt. Brady gets what's coming to him.

This is where Julie Adams comes in. Sloan found that Pvt. Campbell had been writing letters to his wife Ruth (that's Julie Adams), and that Ruth lives close to where Sloan is now stationed. So he can go see her in order to deliver the letters, but also to find out more about what's going on in order to get justice for her husband's killing. Ruth lives on a ranch with her sister Paula (Karen Sharpe) and their father. But Sloan has another shock coming to him. Lt. Brady, as part of his duties, went to see the Mrs. Campbell (née Nelson) and the rest of the family to offer his "condolences", not that he's going to tell them the truth about how Campbell died. But Brady took the opportunity to start putting the moves on Paula. This only makes Sloan more determined to take Brady down, and also causes each of them to hate the other even more.

So you can guess what's going to happen next, which is that the two are going to be tasked with going on another mission together, this time on Tarawa atoll hence the title of the movie. The mission might just give Brady the chance to issue orders to Sloan that would lead to Sloan's death. Then again, there's still a Production Code in force....

Tarawa Beachhead is decidedly a B movie, although it's certainly a surprisingly dark idea for such a film. It's not bad, but it is certainly still a B and, as with a lot of these movies, there's a reason why it's not well remembered all these years later.