Teufelskerle in Fernost

I enjoyed this film. The weakest aspect was the acting. The plot for most of the movie (the Japan holiday portion) was entertaining with plenty of comedy relief. That comedy relief was tempered by a healthy dose of 50s stereotyping for both the Japanese and the Marines. It was less predictable than I expected. The battle scenes showed some great action shots of early jet launches (in color) from the aircraft carriers which were well done and the Air Force air to mud scenes with the fighters were good. Overall I had few problems with this movie after taking in to consideration the time period and obviously low budget. Sit back and enjoy a few laughs

Caught the movie while surfing, and would've kept on looking except they mentioned they were going to Yokosuka Japan for leave. Having been stationed in Yokosuka the year it was released, I had to stick around to see if they'd show any part of it. The movie kept mentioning the Ginza, which of course, is in Tokyo. They probably were trying to refer to Honcho Street in Yokosuka, which was the main sailor bar street, and was definitely not the street they showed at night in the movie. When they entered an alleged Yokosuka bar, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Instead of a small, dingy, crowded bar with tables, booths and bar girls hustling fleet sailors for drinks, it was like a 50's night club in America, complete with tablecloths and lamps on tables with a stage and chorus girls. IOW, nothing like any of the bars I saw in the two years I was stationed there. We base sailors, at the Naval Communications Station there had our own bar, the Bar Midnight, which was an all-night bar, not subject to cinderella liberty rules, as were the Honcho Street bars. My first question was 'Why name Yokosuka as a destination city for leave, which they constantly referred to as 'furlough', an Army term..If you arrive by ship, perhaps, but Tokyo would've been the destination for R&R from Korea, not Yokosuka. There was a Marine barracks on the base, but their main duty was guarding the Main Gate, running the Brig and firing the 105 mm howitzers at ceremonies, not running an 'intelligence unit' on base. And come to think of it, I don't remember ever seeing a Marine Shore Patrol unit off-base. My second question was 'Who the hell wrote this . . . crud?' A very derivative movie, nothing original or truly funny.

The story begins in Korea and you see some Marines fighting the enemy briefly. Soon, they are given leave and do what many American soldiers did during the Korean War...they all head to Japan to chase women and behave like total clods. Then, after a lot of hijinks, they head back to war....where you hope they're all blown to bits.

While the film is in color and clearly it had a budget far greater than an Ed Wood film, it is NOT particularly good. Most of this is because the writing and dialog are pretty bad...and the soldiers are easy to dislike. Even the exalted director, Raoul Walsh, couldn't make this script enjoyable.

By the way, a few things to mention. First, although IMDB says the film was made in Okinawa, one brief scene in particular was clearly filmed at Kinkaku-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan. Also, check out the biography for the hotel manager, Heihachirô Ôkawa. The information on IMDB is scant...but if you Google his name, you'll learn some interesting things about his life during and after WWII.

The script was bad and the acting was bad. It was supposed to be a comedy but it wasn't funny -- I would call it verbal slapstick, juvenile. I would expect 13 year olds to act like this, maybe, but not adults, not even in a comedy. The dialogue was unbelievably stilted. There wasn't a realistic moment in the film. All the Asians in the film were presented as caricatures. I tuned in to AMC part way through the film, actually not too long after it started, and kept watching it mainly to see the credits at the end. I didn't realize it would last another two hours. Another annoying aspect was the martial music they played non-stop. MASH, which debuted a few years later, was the movie they were trying to make but fell far short of.

joebat23 was overly kind in his grading of this movie, it is absolutely terrible. The plot couldn't even be called sophomoric, the acting was atrocious and the reasoning of the characters was juvenile. Add to this the incredibly bad dialog and an "Intelligence department" that can't figure out what is going on when it should be painfully obvious and you have a movie that makes those Police Academy movies seem like high art worthy of a Nobel Prize.

The only reason I can think of to watch this movie is that a relative is in it and even then I don't think you should lest you lose any regard you have for that relative.

Oh, if you are expecting any even halfway decent battle scenes, forget it.