Pacific Inferno

There were no black us navy divers during world War 2. That's just a simple fact. They simply didn't get the opportunity. This movie was just an action vehicle for Jim brown . The filmmakers took dramatic license with things that never happened.

If you are in to bad movies for the entertainment of witnessing bad movies, bad acting, bad production etc..aka Mystery Science Theater 3000 quality....you will love Pacific Inferno. Jim Brown will be forever remembered as one of the greatest football players to ever play the game...as an actor he will forever be remembered as one of the greatest football players to ever play the game... I am not sure who Rolf Bayer was...but I am hoping he was 15 or 16 years old when he directed this, perhaps he may have been the next Spielberg in the making...because if he was a grown man directing this...a 15 or 16 year old could have done better.... The basis or plot for the movie probably had some historical merit and maybe even truthfully accurate...but the actual film may be one of worst movies made in American film history...I kept waiting for Lee Marvin, William Holden or Charles Bronson to pop in to somehow save whatever "face" was left of this film. I would have loved to have been at the red carpet, black tie gala for the Hollywood opening when this movie previewed...as this movie had to have many a viewer laughing and cringing under their breath... it is on the dime DVD racks now....look for it for entertainment value...this movie is so bad it is too good to pass up...

My review was written in February 1985 after watching the film on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

"Pacific Inferno" is actor-athlete Jim Brown's unsuccessful attempt to enter the film producer ranks, a dull low-budgeter imitating his 1967 "The Dirty Dozen" hit. Picture was lensed in the Philippines in 1977 under titles "Ship of Sand" and "Do They Ever Cry in America?", never released domestically and now surfacing for home video fans.

Picture takes almost 10 minutes to get started, limning the W. W. II story of captured U. S. navy divers forced by the Japanese to recover $16,000,000 in silver pesos dumped in Manila Bay in 1942 by orders of Gen. MacArthur (to avoid their falling into Japanese hands). Racist white Lt. Dennis (Rik von Nutter) is ranking officer among the Yanks, though Preston (Jim Brown) is their natural leader.

Preston works with Filipino prisoner Troy (Dindo Fernando) to organize an escape, in return for getting the silver pesos to the local partisans. Pic climaxes with Brown duplicating his "Dirty Dozen" brokenfield running with explosives in hand, abetted by teammate from that earlier film, Richard Jaeckel.

Physical production is deficient, with anachronistic hairstyles and attitudes taken from the 1970s. Casting is a joke, as Filipino film regular Vic Diaz plays a nasty Japanese and busty black actress-singer Wilma Reading is introed as a Filipino partisan. Brown's thank you credits are extended to Hugh Hefner, Don Cornelius, Maurice White, Bill Russell and Richard Pryor (last-named briefly his latterday employer at Indigo Productions), among others.

Another badly-made Filipino war movie. I was hoping this late '70s outing would have more in common with the 1970s exploitation movies such as EBONY, IVORY AND JADE than earlier Filipino war flicks like THE RAVAGERS but I was wrong: this goes in the opposite direction, as it's an almost thrill-free movie about deep sea divers and the hunt for hidden treasure.

PACIFIC INFERNO attempts to tap into the blaxploitation market with the presence of black star Jim Brown as the lead, but he fails to bring much in the way of interest with him. The supporting cast, including Richard Jaeckel and and Filipino actor Vic Diaz, are similarly saddled with dull characters.

The film attempts to be some sort of prison camp movie but the family-friendly rating excises any exploitation potential. Much of it is taken up with murky underwater stuff, which is even duller than similar scenes in THUNDERBALL. The only halfway decent part of the movie is the climax, but by that stage it's all too little, too late. The terrible production values and rubbish script sink this one from the outset.

Why are there no good reviews? Because this film is hysterically bad.

Set in a Japanese prison camp in World War II, we have Jim Brown as the hero who puts up with a hysterically unbelievable racist officer, and just as hysterical is the way the Japanese officers brown nose Jim Brown's character.

This is probably the worst film any of these actors ever did. Stereotypes not only abound, but they dominate this film. The sixties-seventies music may be the best thing about the film, maybe because it has nothing to do with the film.

This is even difficult to sit back and enjoy as mindless fun. This film is even more racist than the message of racism it tries to deliver. And believe me, I was alive in the seventies, and we thought crap like this was just as stupid then. It was never popular.