Beach Red

Beach Red
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Cornel Wilde
Written by	Story: Peter Bowman Screenplay: Clint Johnston, Don Peters, Cornel Wilde
Starring	Cornel Wilde Rip Torn Jaime Sánchez
Cinematography	Cecil R. Cooney
Editing by	Frank P. Keller
Release date(s)	1967
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Beach Red is a 1967 World War II film starring Cornel Wilde (who also directed) and Rip Torn. The film depicts a landing by the U.S. Marine Corps on an unnamed Japanese held Pacific island. A reference to the recent Bougainville Campaign early in the film presumably dates the action to November 1943 or later.

The film is based on a lengthy piece of prose, not quite a novel written by Peter Bowman based on his experiences with the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific Islands campaigns.

The opening sequence of an opposed beach landing bears a stylistic resemblance to Saving Private Ryan, even though there is more than thirty years between the productions. In one scene during the landing a Marine is shown with his arm blown off similar to Tom Lea's painting The Price.

As Americans are shown consolidating their gains, flashbacks illustrate the lives of American and Japanese combatants. Shifting first person voice over in a stream of consciousness style is also used to portray thoughts of numerous characters. Like Wilde's previous production of The Naked Prey the film does not use subtitles for characters speaking Japanese.

The film only has one musical theme, a song by written Antonino Buenaventura that appears in the titles sung in a folk song manner by Jean Wallace and appears in various orchestrations throughout the film. The titles of the film are various paintings that suddenly segues into the preparations for the landing.

Director, producer, and co-writer Wilde plays a Marine Captain the company commander, Rip Torn plays his believable company gunnery sergeant who says the film's tagline "That's what we're here for. To kill. The rest is all crap!" .

Production

• Filmed on location in the Philippines using troops of the Philippine Armed Forces. The sequence of the Japanese dressed in Marine uniforms was inspired by the original book mentioning Japanese wearing American helmets to infiltrate American lines.
• When seeking assistance from the U.S. Marine Corps, Cornel Wilde was told that due to the commitments of the Vietnam War all the Corps could provide the film was color stock footage taken during the Pacific Island campaigns. The film provided had deteriorated so Wilde had to spend a considerable part of the film's budget to restore the film to an acceptable quality in order to blend into the film. The Marine Corps was grateful that their historical film had been restored at no cost to them.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Beach Red at the Internet Movie Database