| The Boys in Company C | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Sidney J. Furie |
| Produced by | Andre Morgan |
| Written by | Sidney J. Furie Rick Natkin |
| Starring | Stan Shaw Andrew Stevens R. Lee Ermey James Whitmore Jr Scott Hylands Michael Lembeck |
| Music by | Jaime Mendoza-Nava |
| Cinematography | Godfrey A. Godar |
| Editing by | Frank J. Urioste |
| Studio | Golden Harvest Columbia Pictures |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 2 1978 |
| Running time | 125 min. |
| Country | Hong Kong United States |
| Language | English |
The Boys in Company C, directed by Sidney J. Furie; starring Stan Shaw, Andrew Stevens (in his Golden Globe-nominated performance), Craig Wasson, Santos Morales and Michael Lembeck is a 1978 film about United States Marines in the Vietnam War. It was among the first Vietnam War films to appear after the Vietnam Era, and was the first role for R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket fame. Per Andrew Stevens on the DVD commentary he was discovered by the director Sidney J. Furie. It was a co-production of Golden Harvest and Columbia Pictures, the latter originally handling theatrical distribution. The movie was filmed in the Philippines.
The film is the first in Sidney J. Furie's Vietnam War trilogy along with 2001's Under Heavy Fire and 2006's The Veteran, somewhat similar to Oliver Stone and his Vietnam War trilogy with 1986's Platoon, 1989's Born on the Fourth of July and 1993's Heaven & Earth.
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This war drama, which prefigures the similarly bifurcated Full Metal Jacket, follows the lives of five young Marine inductees from their training in boot camp in 1967 through a tour in Vietnam in 1968. Things quickly devolve into a hellish nightmare. Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they win a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines. However as they might have known, once the match starts, nothing in Vietnam is as simple as it seems.[1]
Wasson plays guitar and sings the song which is used during the film and over the end credits.
Nomination Golden Globe:Best Motion Picture Acting Debut – Male, Andrew Stevens (1979)
This film has been issued numerous times on video through the decades since the film's release, first in-house via Columbia Pictures, and later through other companies as certain ancillary rights changed hands (it ended up becoming part of the library of ITC Entertainment). Today, the major rights are with independent film company Fortune Star Media, who also now holds the film's copyright, with distribution by Hen's Tooth under license.
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