Review of Inchon (1981) by Michael T — 18 Jun 2010
I saw this last night (18/06/2010) at a friend's place; he had acquired a bootleg DVD of this film (which looked like it was copied from a VHS tape of a television broadcast of this film). The film had a brief run in the theatres back when it was released, received some of the worst reviews since HEAVEN'S GATE (1980) and quickly disappeared from movie theatres in Canada and the USA.
Heck, I had forgotten seeing trailers for it on TV back in the day until author Dennis Sauter reminded me of this film's existence in his 1996 book (What Were They Thinking?) The Worst Movies Of All Time.
One of the most interesting things about this film was that it was financed by two millionaires; one a Japanese financier and the other a South Korean religious leader. Yes, Reverend Sun Yun Moon sank roughly 8-10 miliion dollars into this film and made back about 2 million.
No wonder the Moonies declined in the 1980s. Moon hoped to use the profits of this film to male a movie about the life of Jesus. It had a decent director in Terrance Young and good all-star cast. What went wrong? In a word, everything.
Laurence Olivier portrays famous U.S. General Douglas MacArthur in a scenary-chewing performance worthy of Vincent Price. And what was the deal with his eyebrows, they look painted on like a Japanese Kabucki artist.
Richard Roundtree never really gets to kick North Korean butt in his role as a combat Marine (and he seems too hip and 1970ish for a recently integrated 1950 U.S. military); David Janssen is long-winded and boring and his exposed chest hair screamed for gold chains; Ben Gazzara and Jacqueline Bisset actually try to act in this mess.
Moon and many South Koreans have an affinity for Doug MacArthur; he planned the Inchon landing that cut off North Korea's army and he forced the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel. The movie hints that the Truman administration cruelly put Doug out to pasture after he saved South Korea.
What the forget to mention is that Doug was fired by Truman after he stupidly blundered too close to the Chinese border and ended up almost losing the war to Mao's forces when they entered the war.
..The film itself is almost laughably bad, but don't look for an official DVD release anytime soon.
This review of Inchon (1981) was written by Michael T on 18 Jun 2010.
Inchon has generally received negative reviews.
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