Hellfighters

Chance Buckman runs a Houston-based company that travels the world putting out the most dangerous oil well fires. The work is spectacular and lethal, and it has cost him his marriage: his wife Madelyn could no longer live with the risk. When a job in Venezuela goes wrong, Chance is badly hurt, and his young colleague Greg Parker is sent to bring word to the family Chance has drifted away from, including his daughter Tish. Greg and Tish grow close, while Chance, recovering, tries to rebuild the ties he let slip. The film is based on the life of the real oil field firefighter Red Adair, and it mixes large-scale action sequences at burning wells with the domestic story of a man whose job keeps threatening the people he loves.

Andrew V. McLaglen directed, working from a screenplay by Clair Huffaker, with Robert Arthur producing for Universal Pictures. It was the sixth of the sixteen films McLaglen directed, arriving between Bandolero! and The Undefeated. John Wayne plays Chance, with Katharine Ross as Tish, Jim Hutton as Greg, Vera Miles as Madelyn, Jay C. Flippen as Jack Lomax and Bruce Cabot as Joe Horn among a credited cast of thirty-three. The film runs 121 minutes.

Audience reception has been moderate: on IMDb it holds 6.5/10 from around 7,100 votes, and on TMDB 6.3/10 from about 93 votes.