In honor of the HBO mini series The Pacific, this week’s pick goes out to the “devil dogs” of the United States Marine Corp with the 1967 release Beach Red, directed by and starring Cornel Wilde. Beach Red is a “Vietnam morale booster” which came out at a very critical time during America’s involvement in Vietnam.

The film centers around a company of Marines (commanded by Wilde) who storm a Pacific hell hole of an island to take it back from the Japanese. A majority of the film is told through a series of montages/narration by both American & Japanese who are tired of fighting, and of the war (very similar plot to Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers & Letters From Iwo Jima.) Captain MacDonald (Wilde) and Gunnery Sgt. Ben Honeywell, played ever so convincingly by veteran character actor, and one who confuses his home with a local bank Rip Torn, lead the cast.

The scenes involving the Marines invading the beach head are quite well done, even though a majority of it is stock footage that Wilde spent a considerable amount of money on in order for the deteriorating film stock to match up with his film. Many of the scenes are somewhat “Saving Private Ryan like” in which there are shots in the water, and jerky camera movements which show the disorienting nature of combat.

Spielberg may have shot those scenes in Saving Private Ryan as an homage to Wilde’s directing style. When the film was wrapped and it was shown to some high ranking officials in the USMC, they thanked Wilde for doing a great job at restoring the old combat footage and that they personally didn’t have to restore the footage themselves. I trust the money they saved went towards helping many veterans, and those still fighting in the jungles of Vietnam?

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