Hell in the Pacific

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Hell in the Pacific
original film poster
Directed by	John Boorman
Produced by	Reuben Bercovitch Henry G. Saperstein Selig J. Seligman
Written by	Reuben Bercovitch Alexander Jacobs Eric Bercovici
Starring	Lee Marvin, Toshirō Mifune
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Distributed by	Cinerama
Release date(s)	18 December 1968
Running time	103 minutes
Language	English
Budget	Unknown
IMDb profile

Hell in the Pacific is a 1968 World War II film starring Lee Marvin and Toshirō Mifune. It was directed by John Boorman.

Two men, one American and one Japanese, are marooned on an uninhabited Pacific island. In order to survive they must accept their differences and work together, despite their two countries being at war.

Containing little dialogue, this film is not dubbed or sub-titled, thus authentically portraying the frustration of restricted communication between the two characters. The film was entirely shot in the Rock Islands of Palau in the north Pacific Ocean, near the Philippines in the Philippine Sea.

The film was originally released with a rather abrupt ending, one that left many dissatisfied with the outcome of the struggle these men endured. The subsequent DVD release has an alternative ending, which while leaving the eventual destiny of the two ambiguous, was much more in line with the overall direction of the movie.

Marvin and Mifune are the only two actors in the entire film. Both actors had real-life World War II combat experience: Marvin served with the US Marines in the Pacific, where he was wounded and received the Purple Heart; meanwhile Mifune served in the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

1 Critical reception
2 Post-film collaboration
3 Adaptations
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Critical reception

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"Toshiro^[sic] Mifune also took on foreign assignments, but few did him justice. It was only John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific that captured something of his range, humour and power." - British Film Institute

[edit] Post-film collaboration

One of the writers, Eric Bercovici, would go on to write the screenplay for, and produce, the Emmy Award winning television mini-series Shōgun (based on the James Clavell novel) for NBC, with Toshirō Mifune cast as "Toranaga" the man who would eventually become the Shogun.

[edit] Adaptations

The concept was re-worked^{[citation needed]} in 1979 for the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella "Enemy Mine", later adapted to film in 1985. Hell in the Pacific was also the direct basis, a year later, for "The Return of Starbuck", the only well-received (and the final) episode of Galactica 1980, the short-lived spin-off of the original Battle Star Galactica TV series.^[1]