Pretty average Pacific Island war film, it has Cornel Wilde (who also directed) and Rip Torn in it, which isn't saying much. Rip Torn is reliable but he's given a stupid scenario and not much screen time. The script is lazily assembled and messy, and towards the end, the whole film becomes so deluded in unbelievable scenes that it detracts from the decent Marine landing opening.

1950's tanks are used and also Filipino army regulars take the place of Japanese soldiers in a horrible scene where they are wiped out by bombing and strafing planes.

Cornel Wilde is ridiculous as a Captain, who is at the front battle lines, why, because he also wrote the script. He wanted to appear like a hero so he takes a shot at the glory. Most of the cast is played by wooden young men who can't act very well. Add a dispersed monologue from each soldier, boring flashbacks a la 60's clothing and hairstyles, and an annoying 1960's folk song.

The battle scenes are also hampered by an imposed, black smoke that seems to have been put in in the studio post-production. A few camera shadows and other mistakes are also apparent.

Still, it's worth a look if you liked Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Halls of Montezuma (1950).

Cornel Wilde directed this combat film on Luzon in the Philippines, and he did a realistic job of it. He had the cooperation of what appears to be the entire armed forces of that nation. He had the cooperation of the U. S. Marine Corps too, but when they saw the results, they asked that their credit be deleted.

There had never been another movie quite like it, but this was 1967 and a time of experimentation. Wilde had his actors lugging real forty-pound backpacks around on the beach. It's crude and sometimes arty and confusing but it was an original in its time. I don't believe we'd ever seen an assault from the sea in which bloody body parts were left floating in the water before. Corpses, yes, blown-off arms and legs, no.

Wilde gives a good deal of sympathetic time to the Japanese defenders of this island. It's completely unlike any of the early World War II movies, such as, say, "Bataan," where the enemy is faceless and referred to only as "bandy legged baboons" and worse. Here, not only do the Japanese soldiers have faces, but some of them are handsome too, and they have friends, and, like the Americans, they have families back home and like the Americans they fight well before they die in agony. It's the kind of movie that's likely to make some people nervous. Not too many, only the ones who think about what they're watching.

But it IS crude. I don't know what the novel is like, but I'll bet I could pick out the bits of dialog that were drawn from it. The rest is overblown and tends to state the obvious. And Wilde uses (sparely) internal monologues that could better have been dispensed with. We see a close up of a man's face and we hear his thoughts. "Will I get out of this alive? Oh, sure I will. I got my lucky rabbit's foot with me." That sort of thing. The dumb theme song is so glaringly obvious that it's almost palpable.

It's arty too, as befits a war movie made in the 60s. An ominous spider hides in a pretty white blossom. (Did Terence Malick see this?) Lots of reminiscences about life back home, almost all of them in still shots. The interior monologues roll on. ("I love you, darling.") Everybody -- Americans and Japanese alike -- seem to have pretty wives and smiling children at home. Every damned one of them seems to have lived a better life than I have so far!

And it's confusing, especially towards the end, as if hurried. This had nominations from two professional organizations for best editing and I can't imagine why. Wilde discovers that the Japanese are about to mount a flank attack and calls in the air force to stop it. "Here come the flyboys," he remarks with satisfaction. And indeed a couple of fighters fly over the beach and strafe the troops to pieces. The only problem is that the troops are all wearing Marine fatigues and there's not a Japanese in sight.

The two men we've gotten to know best -- a hillbilly and a minister's son -- evidently have a terrific mano a mano battle with a Japanese soldier until only one American and one Japanese are left alive to show each other a touch of ironic humanity. But we don't see the battle, just the three soldiers lying there.

Still, I give the thing extra points for its ambition and its ability to make war creepier than most films do. I can think of only three or four films that can make you squirm with discomfort while watching a battle, by showing that the enemy is something more than a villainous rat. I think of THOSE as true anti-war films. The others are puffery. Maybe necessary propaganda, even good propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. I wonder if it's ever morally sound for us to leave a movie theater after a war movie feeling satisfied and proud, as if our local high school had just won a football game.

Long before Saving Private Ryan and the notice taken of the rather graphic combat sequences, Cornel Wilde produced, directed, and starred in Beach Red which was 30 years before Saving Private Ryan. Wilde got the same knocks and criticism for his film. And he also received a lot of deserved acclaim.

The plot such as it is a study of a campaign on some forgotten Pacific island that the US Marines are trying to take from the Japanese. Wilde plays the captain of a platoon and his gunnery sergeant is Rip Torn. Wilde also narrates the film from flashback and within the film itself are flashbacks into civilian life both the Marines and the defending Japanese soldiers have. Also in Wilde's own flashback is his wife Jean Wallace whom he always tried to have parts for in his films.

The marines land and the Japanese retreat as per usual in Pacific war films and the war itself. However the Japanese captain, Wilde's opposite number Dale Ishimoto has a rather clever idea for a counterattack. I won't reveal what it is you have to see Beach Red for that.

Wilde himself plays a tough, but fair commanding officer. Two marine privates Patrick Wolfe and Burr DeBenning present an interesting contrast in enlistees. Their good natured rivalry carries a lot of the film.

As a harbinger of Saving Private Ryan, Beach Red was years ahead of its time. If you are a fan of war films, you cannot go wrong with Beach Red.