One of a pair of films by Sam Fuller made during the Korean War. The other was The Steel Helmet. This could as easily be set in WWII, but it is staged against an actual long retreat of American soldiers. A rearguard of 48 men is left behind to protect the retreat and to keep Chinese soldiers tied up in the snow of a strategically critical mountain thoroughfare.
Richard Basehart plays a Corporal who lives in fear of command and who must suffer the anxiety of seeing everyone senior die during the conflict, leaving him in charge. Fuller fought in the US 1st Infantry in WWII from North Africa to the concentration camps so his war films have an implied authority.
The men have little individuality or back story. We see their response to the intensity of fear, and demoralising hopelessness. It is staged on a small studio set in artificial snow, with no music or ambient sound or wind, with Fuller's camera mounted on a crane, searching out pockets of US soldiers trapped by fire into their tiny ice caves.
Fixed Bayonets! is a psychological war film. Most of the dialogue is a back and forth exchange of trench wit and the avoidance of the dangers at hand. It's not about the pity of war, or anti-war, or a propaganda film. It attempts to authentically capture the impact of combat on the men who are made to fight. Their interior war.