Inchon

Inchon (1981)

Runtime: 140 minutes... but the version I saw online was 137 minutes

Directed by: Terence Young

Starring: Poor Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Richard Roundtree, and even Toshiro Mifune

From: The Unificiation Church; yes, a religion funded this

I could probably write an essay about this infamous motion picture; just the fact that the only airing of this after its brief theatrical run was on a religious channel then owned by the Unification Church is fascinating enough, but there's a lot of info in this article about why this still has quite the bad reputation. It's not half a star awful, but it's still pretty bad, and I still wrote a decent amount about it below: 

It was not the plan last night to finally see this infamous bomb-which I've known of for years and a copy of it from the one time it showed on a channel then owned by the producers of this has been on YouTube since early 2012-but circumstances dictated it. While I am glad I finally saw it and “Worst movie of all time!” is a little overboard, it's still pretty bad and the behind the scenes drama is much more interesting than what's on screen. The main reason I saw this when I did: in a few days after I post this, I will have seen a South Korean movie known as Operation Chromite, which is the code name for the Battle of Inchon. As that movie has Liam Neeson (!) as General Douglas MacArthur (!!), there's your reason why the United States will be getting it in limited release. Before I go see that, I felt it necessary to stop putting off seeing this turkey.

I may be courting controversy by going in depth on the Unification Church and Sun Myung Moon; I'll just say that back in the day they got a lot of negative publicity and were accused of such things as brainwashing and being a cult. Moon provided much of the funding for this movie. He wanted to focus on an important figure in the past, so he chose General MacArthur. Spirituality was a key factor in the movie because of the involvement of the Church.

The Battle of Inchon was a real life event during the Korean War in the early 1950's, and MacArthur was involved, but as the movie notes right at the beginning, a lot of what you see in the movie is made-up poppycock. The film is a lot of melodrama involving the relationships between several couples; I wished for more time to be spent on the actual war and planning for battle than the broken marriage between Ben Gazzara and Jacqueline Bisset. But the biggest problem is the confused nature of it all and its bad script. Many things happen randomly, pretty much. While the movie ends at the big battle at the titular Inchon, I have no idea at what time the movie starts; does it take place over weeks, months... I couldn't tell you how long Bisset spends in South Korea and unwittingly being around those 5 Korean orphans.

Then again, among various errors, this is not only a movie where David Janssen and Rex Reed (!) play reporters and their clothing throughout was more apropos of them going out to Studio 54 rather than the early 1950's, but at times CARDBOARD models are used to portray military craft and if the copy on YouTube was clearer you probably could see the wires; talk about something out of an Ed Wood flick. See what I mean about all the drama concerning its production? It is easy to track down information on all that went wrong. Janssen dying during filming was not even the worst part. For crying out loud, psychic Jeanne Dixon was brought in and she made up... er, I mean “contacted the spirit world” and a long-dead MacArthur said that Olivier was perfect for the role. Somehow, she also selected Terence Young as director.

Besides the people I already mentioned, the talent behind and in front of the camera included Jerry Goldsmith, cinematographer Bruce Surtees, and the likes of Richard Roundtree, Omar Sharif in a cameo and even Toshiro Mifune. It was a nice line-up but considering the circumstances, this was a low-light for many of them. Goldsmith's score was at least nice, even if he and the orchestra he worked with literally were in a room too small for everybody; what a rinky-dink production all around. But it is Sir Laurence Olivier as MacArthur that has gained the most infamy. He doesn't look like himself-or the General, really-under pounds of makeup. Old Douglas did sound a bit like W.C. Fields so it explains that part of the performance; as a whole it was not a great job done by a legendary actor... but considering he was in bad health at the time and had to lie down when he wasn't on set due to the heat and his arthritis, I won't dog him for what he admitted was a role he only took because he got paid a lot of money.

I imagine the Unification Church would like people to forget this motion picture ever happened, so I won't ever expect it to be officially released, so YouTube is the way to go for those perversely curious like I was. Even adjusted for inflation it's among the biggest box office bombs of all time, only playing theatrically a matter of days; what a waste of almost 50 million dollars.