Re: The Korean War in Cinema

["Patricia Winston \(Trish\)" <patricia_winston@hotmail.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc James Small" <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 9:15 AM
Subject: The Korean War in Cinema


> At 12:01 PM 4/30/2001 -0400, Gernilee Carter Gramling wrote:
> >
> >    Well, there sure is a glaring absence of movies about the Korean War
> >Police Action(sic). War movies all over the place all the time - but none
on
> >the Korean War.    Jeez, if Washington could influence Hollywood to not
make
> >films about the Korean War, why can't they get them to stop making the
sick
> >stuff they make now?  It must be an indicator of how much interest they
> >really take, and they must have had a lot of interest in keeping the
public
> >in the dark about the Korean War.
>
> It wasn't so much an interest in keeping folks in the dark:  it was simply
> that the Defense Department had been told that our primary strategic
> interest was in Europe and that was were our military IO's concentrated.
> In light of the McCarthy Hearings and the public's fixation on Commuist
> influence in Hollywood, the American film industry was quite responsive to
> government pressure -- and it would have been hard to make a film such as
> BATTLE HYMN without USAF support!  Note that the Korean War years do see a
> number of war and military films made but that these are on non-Korean
> topics.  I'd have to check the IMDB for exact years of release, but I
> believe Hollywood was grinding out non-Korean flicks such as STRATEGIC AIR
> COMMAND and the like while the Korean War was in progress.
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
>
>

Here are the Korean War films I came across.  I don't find any paucity of
film here:

The Steel Helmet
Men of the Fighting Lady
Manchurian Candidate
All the Young Men
Men in War
Pork Chop Hill
Bridges of Toko-Ri
The Bamboo Prison (POW's in Korea)
Battle Flame (female captives of the Red Chinese and the marines who swore
to take them out alive... woo hoo!!!)
Escape (1773)
Air Cadet (1951)
Battle Taxi
Battle Hymn
Battle Zone
Fixed Bayonets (1951)
Provacateur (1996, Korean)
Reluctant Heroes (1971)
Yank in Korea (1951) also released as Letters from Korea
Target Zero (1955)
The Rack (1956) about American POW
Prisoner of War (1954) An American army officer, troubled by reports of
brutality, volunteers to investigate conditions inside North Korean POW
camps. He parachutes behind enemy lines and infiltrates a group of G.I.s
being marched to one of these camps. There, he witnesses scenes of G.I.s
being brainwashed, beaten, subjected to mock executions, deprived of food
and water, and tortured in a variety of ways under the supervision of a
Russian colonel. While reaction to this treatment varies, the officer is
heartened to learn that American soldiers are still a courageous and
enduring force.

Mission over Korea (1953)
The Mountain Road (1960) James Stewart
Korea Patrol (1951)
The Glory Brigade (1953)
Dragonfly Squadron (1954)
Cease Fire (1953)
Combat Squad (1953)


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