Pacific Inferno (1979) User Reviews

Typical 70s

[jt_3d · 3/10 · 23 August 2009]

The best thing about this flick is that it seems like they used a lot of stuff left over from the Pearl Harbor attack in Tora Tora Tora. My favorite was the shot of the P-40 crashing into the row of parked P-40s but filmed from the top of a hangar or crane. Unfortunately it just gets worse from there.

There's two black guys and two white guys as American POWs, as well as some Filipinos POWs and Japanese guards. The ranking POW of the Americans is a white naval Lieutenant, which is of course an O-3 in the navy. At any rate, he's in need of a haircut, badly, distractingly badly. Hockey hair does not belong in a WWII movie. Oh, and he's a racist. He doesn't want to share quarters with the 'negros'. Of course in real life, he wouldn't want to share quarters with the white enlisted guy either. I think the Geneva Convention has a clause about officers quarters and enlisted but that wasn't the point here. Oh well, I think plot is secondary to other issues in this flick. He gets put in his place and pretty much spends the rest of the movie as a look out and running the air pump for the divers.

But once you get going, it's not a bad story line. The japs want the divers to raise the silver thrown out by the Americans before Corrigador fell. The Filipino resistance wants them to take their time. And the POWs do their best to help. A potentially good story and not that badly done I guess. A bit unbelievable when the POWs use camp made re-breathers to swim between the POW camp and the Filipino village, every night. Maybe I'm not that picky when I know going in that this is not a blockbuster film. I guess that's why it comes on a 20-pack DVD war movie collection for five bucks.

The 70s music did not belong in this movie or any WWII movie. It's quite distracting to say the least. The acting was not that bad. Probably better than I could do.

Not being a fan of football, at least I found out that Jim Brown is a real person and not somebody Richard Pryor made up. That in itself was worth the 25¢ I paid for this movie.

Worth watching on TCM or paying a quarter for.

One star for being a war movie, another for being WWII and one more because I'm feeling generous.

Take a pass

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 5 January 2010]

Jim Brown stars and produces a tale set in the Philippines just after the Japanese invasion. The story has the Japanese taking several navy men prisoner including some divers, who they use to retrieve the gold that MacArthur had dumped into the Manila bay.

It's a messy movie aiming to make a statement about war and racism (The film uses Edwin McCain's War in a not so subtle montage). The performances are just adequate at best. Jim Brown is okay, but he doesn't really show any sort of range in a performance that just has him standing there looking annoyed. The sets are serviceable but seem rather cheap. The film suffers from the outset due to a great deal of stock footage including many of the best known shots from the Japanese attack in Tora! Tora! Tora!. The use of such big budget sequence effectively makes the rest of the film look positively anemic; it also reminds one that there are better films out there one could be watching. For me the film seems to have half a real plot, the retrieval of the silver, and half a plot that is there just to fill time. None of it is particularly exciting even with the explosive finale.

Given the choice I'd take a pass.

All acting and nothing else makes this a dull movie.

[emm · 3/10 · 31 January 1999]

Our story: Two U.S. Navy deep sea divers search for silver coins hidden beneath the ocean off the Filipino coast. Our proof: Extremely dull entertainment at its best, with no plot in sight. Jim Brown is completely wasted, provided his help in producing this 70s war turkey. Richard Jaeckel is in his usual form. Don Cornelius and Richard Pryor are among those who gave special thanks in their contributions! BOMBS AWAY!!!

potential cult classic of epic proportions....

[Starrman21 · 1/10 · 5 February 2007]

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...

Stranger things have not happened

[markl1tm · 1/10 · 3 May 2005]

An old high school teacher of mine used to brag that he'd seen every movie EVER made, so one day a friend of mine and I decided to make up a movie called "Pacific Inferno". Later, we got into an argument whether the lead role was played by Carl Weathers or Billy Dee Williams. Our teacher found the argument interesting, so he came up to us and informed us that the lead role in "Pacific Inferno" was played by Jim Brown. We thought he was trapped in a lie, that was until we went to the library and discovered that "Pacific Inferno" was in fact a real movie. This incident forced me to rent the movie... it's horrible. Our made up movie had a better plot than this piece. Weathers and Billy Dee would have been much better in the picture.

You can't go home again (see: 'Dirty Dozen')

[lor_ · 15 February 2023]

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.

Why no good reviews?

[drystyx · 2/10 · 12 February 2010]

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.

Historically inaccurate

[jmills-65365 · 3/10 · 24 January 2022]

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.

In a word, rubbish

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 8 December 2014]

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.