The Hunters

The Hunters (1958)

Mightiest thrill-shocked adventure spectacle of the super-sonic age !

With its electrifying flight sequences and high-powered cast, The Hunters is a mesmerizing film based on the best-selling novel by veteran fighter pilot James Salter. Set during the height of the Korean War, the story centers on Major Cleve Saville (Robert Mitchum), a master of the newly operational F-86 Sabre fighter jets. But adept as he is at flying, Saville¹s personal life takes a nosedive when he falls in love with his wingman¹s (Lee Philips) beautiful wife (May Britt). To make matters worse, Saville must cope with a loud-mouthed rookie (Robert Wagner) in a daring rescue mission that threatens all their lives in this well-crafted war drama.

Date of release
1958-09-01
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (25)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
War, Action, Drama
Director
Dick Powell

Casting

Interesting facts

The Hunters is a 1958 American CinemaScope war film adapted from the novel, The Hunters by James Salter. The picture was produced and directed by Dick Powell and starring Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner as two very different United States Air Force fighter pilots during the Korean War. The cast also features Richard Egan and May Britt.

Production

Wendell Hayes said the film "wasn't so good, except it had an interesting idea that we were not allowed to follow through.. It was about a man who loved war, but we had a problem trying to sell a hero who loved war... I was called in on it, actually, in desperation, because they had a starting date, and they really didn't have a script to shoot; and while we used the title, what I wrote was from start to finish an original screenplay.

The flying scenes were principally filmed over the southwest United States in the vicinity of Luke and Williams Air Force Bases in Arizona. Ramp scenes were filmed at Luke while take-offs were staged from Gila Bend Air Force Auxiliary Field, which had the requisite primitive appearance, appropriate mountain backdrops, and where exteriors simulating rice paddies and a gate for Suwon Air Base could be erected.

Operational F-86 Sabre fighters, which were still front line aircraft at the time, were used in the aerial sequences. Although the group portrayed in the movie ("54th Fighter Group") is a fictitious amalgam of actual units in Korea, the unit markings displayed were those of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, which was based at Suwon until 1954.

With this film, director Dick Powell completed his obligations to 20th Century Fox in his producing-directing contract, having already delivered The Enemy Below (1957) starring Mitchum.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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