Ensign Pulver (1964)

Perhaps if this film had no connection at all to the superb Mister Roberts, it might rate three stars for being simply a terrible comedy misfire of stunning proportions. That could be forgiven, dismissed, and easily overlooked. However, this film exists only as a cynical effort to cash-in on the success of a treasured creative triumph which had been emotionally embraced by audiences worldwide. There is but one redeeming factor in this entire abomination of a sequel and that is the presence of Walter Matthau. He comes off well although the lifeless mess of a script gives him little to work with. The rest of the ensemble is a conglomeration of miscasting (the usually excellent Ives), actors lacking any talent whatsoever (Tommy Sands?!), and the completely charmless, irritating, and horrendously awful Robert Walker, Jr. He alone is enough to sink this stinking scow and was better suited to portraying psychopaths on TV when some delusional casting director actually believed Walker, Jr. would be just right for some doomed police procedural. While it is somewhat interesting to see young future stars at the start of their careers, the performances are really pretty bad and all of these now well-known actors were fortunate to have survived this wreck, let alone going on to win multiple awards, appearing in some of the most successful television programs/films ever produced, and earning many millions in cash. Besides a soulless script, Ensign Pulver was personally assassinated by director Josh Logan, acting without mercy and with a vicious abandon that is painful to witness. Even a gentle soul like Mr. Roberts himself might well have taken some drastic action if he had seen the ruthless damage inflicted upon this rusting tub of unpleasantness and would have desperately deflected Logan's grim pattern of relentless torpedoes. Alas, those who saw the original Mr. Roberts will most likely find this ghastly garbage barge a heartbreaking insult to the source material if not an outright greedy criminal assault upon a beloved classic.