The Green Helmet (1961) User Reviews

Enjoyable enough

[BruceCorneil · 5/10 · 22 August 2003]

Reasonably entertaining British film.

Follows the ups and downs of a fading champion race car driver and his antagonistic relationship with his younger brother who wants to take over the wheel.

Includes some solid racing footage from Sebring, Goodwood and various European tracks. Sid James portrayal of an Australian is a bit shaky (count the number of times he says "sport" .. it seems to be in every second sentence).

Special guest appearance by real life Australian world champ Jack Brabham adds a touch of nostalgic interest.

Not exceptional but enjoyable enough.

For car racing fans, a predictable drama

[jacobs-greenwood · 5/10 · 19 December 2016]

Lots of car racing sequences for the enthusiast in this one; at least three major races and lots of test runs to boot. The film opens at the 24 hours of Le Mans. Bill Travers plays an aging race car driver, Rafferty, who has an accident causing him to think twice before racing again. His Australian crew chief, Richie (Sid James), has had enough and tells Rafferty so when he visits him in the hospital.

However, a "hard of hearing" American businessman, Bartell (Ed Begley), wants to see Rafferty the moment he gets out of the hospital. Bartell is a smalltime tire manufacturer who is convinced he can compete with Firestone, Goodyear, etc. if Rafferty will sign on with him for a year, at $25,000, and help him improve his latest model. He also wants him to race in two big races, Le Mans and Mille Miglai (1000 miles) in Italy. But Rafferty hesitates, because his Dad was killed racing in the Mille Miglai. However, Bartell also happens to have a beautiful daughter Diane (Nancy Walters), and their mutual attraction (and his desire to "get back on the horse"?) convinces him to accept the job.

Then Rafferty returns home to an expensive estate in which he supports his mother (Ursula Jeans) and his 20 year old brother Taz (Sean Kelly), named after a famous race car driver. Taz has just signed on with another sponsor because he assumed that his brother was retiring. Evidentially there was an agreement between the two boys and their mother that only one of them could race at a time, and Taz is ready for his turn.

However, when Rafferty tells of his job with Rafferty, Taz is upset and storms off. The next thing Rafferty does is track down Richie, who has settled down with his wife Kitty (Megs Jenkins), as the owner of a gas station. Richie shows Rafferty a car he has designed, and has been building by hand, and Rafferty offers him an opportunity to race it. Of course, he accepts and it's off to test the car and the tires.

Though the tires fail initially, and Bartell and his product manager Ed (Gordon Tanner) trick Rafferty into racing at Sebring in Florida as well. He wins the race, but only after using someone else's tires, and one of his friends is killed when he passes him aggressively.

The rest of this one is pretty predictable. Rafferty gets engaged to Diane, another person close to him will die in a race car accident, he reconciles with his brother Taz, and the only question is whether Rafferty can conquer the ghost of his Dad's accident and win the Mille Miglai. Do you think he can?

More errors in the movie

[barenekd · 6/10 · 8 September 2010]

The movie is about an old race driver, Greg, who can't get a ride with a factory team, but has a tire manufacturer, Bartel, who is interested in hiring him to test tires. Greg's Aussie buddy is building his own car, but needs financing so Greg gets Bartel to get the car for his tests, with side stories involving Bartel's daughter and hassles with his mother and brother about who should be participating in the racing. The most glaring error in the movie is our heroes wanting to run in the Mille Miglia. The movie opens with scenes from the 1960 Lemans, and other years blended in. So obviously the movie was in the current moment of the time it was made. The last Mille Miglia was run in 1957, so our gang would have needed a "Way-Back" machine to even see one. I guess the book the movie is based on was written in 1955 and the story had some relevance. But in 1961, the story's venue needed to be changed to maybe the Nurburgring 1000Km or the Targa Florio.

An entertaining film for auto racing fans

[biker45 · 7/10 · 1 June 2002]

THE GREEN HELMET is an entertaining film for auto racing devotees, but might not be of more than passing interest to anyone else. I viewed the film when it was released in the United States in 1961, and found it engrossing. Unfortunately, it is rarely shown on television and is not available (as far as I know) on video media. I have not seen it since its original theatrical run. The story involves the testing of newly designed racing tires, and includes the obligatory romantic subplot between the driver hired to do the testing and the daughter of the tire manufacturer. The most notable feature of the film is the pioneering use of cameras mounted on the front of the test vehicle, that give an unobstructed view of what a racing driver actually sees and hears when operating a racing car at extremely high speeds. This photographic technique was used to great effect in the much more famous film GRAND PRIX, released five years later. This feature makes the film a must-see (if one can find it) for anyone interested in the sport of auto racing.

Good one for motoring history fans

[tombancroft2 · 19 January 2008]

This movie still crops up on British TV from time to time. Watched it just yesterday in fact. A goof not mentioned before is when the twin headlamp racing car crashes. As it rolls over and off the track, it suddenly becomes a single headlamp model! A passable film, but obviously very dated now. It is useful of course to those who are interested in motor racing history. Some good shots of the famous marques close up, and a rare appearance by the legendary Jack Brabham. Nostalgic memories stirred by names like Hillman, Singer, Humber, Sunbeam advertised around the Siverstone track. Never quite understood how Bill Travers did so well in his career. Always seemed a bit wooden to me. Script calls for Sid James to use the Aussie word 'Sport' in almost every sentence, which gets a bit boring.

Black & White predecessor to "Grand Prix"

[charles-p-hall · 7/10 · 24 February 2022]

I don't think the other reviewers do justice to this movie. The racing scenes are excellent, plenty good enough to give you a feel for how terrifying it is to drive at high speed. It's second only to 1966's "Grand Prix" which had the luxury of color, a bigger budget and newer technology.

Plot-wise, you can only do so much with a racing story. No one avoids the cliches. This plot is at least as good as "Grand Prix". The real attraction here is the cast and the cars.

Bill Travers is excellent as the older racing driver, Syd James is always top-notch, and Ed Begley for once is not over the top in his acting. The supporting cast is all fine and believable. We even get a cameo of Jack Brabham, real life three time formula one champion.

All the cars shown are fun to see nowadays. There are lots of Triumph Heralds, which were even sold in the USA in the 60's, a Triumph 2 or 3, what look like Jaguar D-types, and many more I don't recognize.

The climactic race at the Mille Miglia has a lot of hair-raising scenes of racing on regular roads through towns and along cliffs. I looked on Wikipedia and the race was discontinued in 1957 after one too many fatal crashes, so the movie does not exaggerate the danger.

Well worth a watch.

the green helmet

[mossgrymk · 4/10 · 2 March 2022]

Nancy Walters is one strange actress, huh? She's American playing an American but employs a quite good Brit accent throughout. If this were a halfway decent film I'd either ignore it or maybe make a note of it in passing. But in dreck like this such eccentricities tend to assume undue importance.

Everybody has to retire sooner or later. Better to retire alive then dead.

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 20 May 2009]

**SPOILER ALERT** After suffering a near fatal accident in his last race over the hill-pushing 40- top British race car driver Greg Rafferty, Bill Travers, is about to call it quits when he gets a telegram from racing car tire manufacture Joseph Bartell, Ed Begley. Bartell wants Greg to test out his latest invention, a heat resistant car tire, in actual racing competition.

All this doesn't go too well with both Greg'e mum, Ursula Jeans, and kid brother Taz, Sean Kelly. Mrs Rafferty had lost her husband in the grueling and dangerous Italian Mille Miglia race back in 1948. She doesn't went her son Greg to suffer the same fate. As for 21 year-old Taz he promised his Mum that he'll refrain from racing competitively, he's now a used car salesman, until his older brother Greg retires. With Greg back in action Taz feels that his bast days as a racer are quickly disappearing with Greg, by racing, keeping him from fulfilling his life long dream. Winning the prestigious Formula One group of races that his dad won back in 1940's.

After a winning performance in the USA with his partner Jack, Jack Brabham, that proved that Bartell's tires were the real deal Greg is now back in Europe to test them and his unbeatable racing car designed by his friend and car mechanic Richie Launder, Sid James. The big test is to come in the Italan Mille Migila race! The very race that his father was killed in some 13 years ago.

With his friend and partner in the race Richie getting killed, after the car hit an oil slick, in a test run on the Mille Miglia course Greg has no choice but to withdraw from the race. That's until Greg's kid brother Taz, who at the time he wasn't on speaking terms with, volunteers to replace Richie and partner with him in the 1000 mile long race. This not only gave both Greg and Taz a chance to avenge their fathers, who was killed in trying to win this very race, tragic death but also to give Greg the chance to retire from car racing not only on top but alive as well.

P.S Real life-and happily still with us-legendary race car champion, who won the Formula One Group Race and unprecedented three times, Jack Barbhan plays both Grege's good friend and racing partner Jack in the movie. Barbham, an Australian, not only received the O.B.E, Order of the British Empire, back in 1967 but was also knighted by Queen Eliabeth II in 1979. This making Jack the only race car driver in all of British History to receive such an honor!

Round and round they go

[JohnSeal · 5/10 · 5 June 2008]

And where they crash, nobody knows--but watch out for that oil slick! Bill Travers stars as racing star Rafferty, hired by rubber magnate Bartell (Ed Begley) to test his super duper new tires. Unfortunately, the tires ain't all they're cracked up to be, leading to complications for our hero, his son (Sean Kelly) and his Aussie mechanic (Sid James). The Green Helmet has one thing going for it: some superb racing sequences and location footage. Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks, too: Travers is as wooden as ever, there's some absolutely wretched process screen work that looks even worse when edited into the genuinely good footage, and too many close ups of tires threatening to do something horribly dangerous. In fact, I kept expecting them to twirl their moustaches and laugh fiendishly, but alas, all they do is spin and spin and spin before bursting or breaking.

The (Black-and-White) Green Helmet

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 14 March 2003]

Although it sounds like the sort of film an anonymous sounding government department might release to educate the public about a particularly nasty type of sexually communicable disease, THE GREEN HELMET is, in fact, a rather ordinary flick about motor racing; while not exactly earth-shattering, it has to be said that the movie is nowhere near as unpleasant as the aforementioned disease. The storyline is strictly second rate and rarely manages to grab the attention, while those characters marked for tragic ends are obvious from the outset. The racing scenes are quite well-filmed (for the time – there's none of the one/two second cross-cutting that would be used today to crank up the suspense) and there are a couple of effective crash scenes, but we have to spend far too long on the test track before getting down to the real nitty-gritty. The use of real-life racing drivers, while perhaps boosting audience figures in the early sixties, adds little to the film now, as they are mostly names long since forgotten to anyone without an interest in motor-racing.

Old school pro sports car racing

[fjcamper · 8/10 · 2 August 2006]

As a child, I read Jon Cleary's novel THE GREEN HELMET in 1955, and was glad to see it as a film in 1961. My sports car racing interest in its postwar golden age was strong, and this novel and film reflects that era well.

I have had many years of racing experience now, amateur and professional, to include employment with national championship teams and wins at the Daytona 24-Hour, Sebring, Road Atlanta, etc. The team/sponsor politics, dread and anticipation of crashes, test and practice sequences, are all good, for a movie.

THE GREEN HELMET will take you back to a day when driver's suits were cotton, roll bars were optional, and a guy with a garage special could win against the big factory teams.