Packaging Front, Spine and Back - OR - Square Packaging Front
Cry of Battle
Catalog Number
1859
-
Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Catalog Number
1859
Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Release Year
Country
N/A (NTSC)
N/A | N/A | N/A
N/A | N/A
Cover Artist / Designer
Cry of Battle (1963)
Additional Information
Additional Information
Lustiest Saga of the South Pacific
Cry of Battle is a 1963 coming of age story and war film based on the 1951 novel Fortress in the Rice by Benjamin Appel who was a journalist and special assistant to the U.S. Commissioner for the Philippines from 1945-46. The film stars Van Heflin, James MacArthur, Rita Moreno, Leopoldo Salcedo and Sidney Clute. Set during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the working title was To Be a Man.[1]
Cry of Battle and War Is Hell were playing at the Texas Theater when Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested there for the murder of President John F. Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit.
Producer Joe Steinberg had a wealthy brother named Harry Stonehill in the Philippines who assisted with the financing of the film. He hired his friends Irving Lerner to direct and Bernard Gordon to write the screenplay. Gordon saw the opportunity to use the screenplay as a comment on American attitudes towards Third World people[2] and attitudes towards masculinity explaining the film's working title of To Be a Man. During the film Dave asks Joe if raping his host's granddaughter made him feel like a man. Joe responded that fighting when you have to and having a woman when you can was feeling like a man. Joe also initiates Dave into manhood by using his winnings in a poker game to give Dave a night with a prostitute. In Dave's first battle, Dave captures a panicked Japanese soldier with Joe grabbing Dave's hands holding his rifle with bayonet that he thrusts into the prisoner.
Rita Moreno's scenes were shot around her flying back to Hollywood to accept her Academy Award for West Side Story. A Filpino designed her dress for the Awards ceremony with Edith Head voting her dress the most original of the night. She returned the Philippines the next day.[3]
Her nude scene in the film attracted a great deal of publicity[4] and had to be filmed with her wearing a dress
Surely Benjamin Appel's novel Fortress in the Rice was more interesting than its static film adaptation Cry of Battle. Van Heflin plays a crusty soldier of fortune fighting with the Philippine partisans during World War II. James MacArthur co-stars as the wealthy, aimless son of a businessman who joins the partisan cause for a lark. He is toughened up by Heflin and romanced by local girl Rita Moreno. Life's just full of surprises, isn't it?
Release Date: October 11, 1963
Distrib: Allied Artists
Cry of Battle is a 1963 coming of age story and war film based on the 1951 novel Fortress in the Rice by Benjamin Appel who was a journalist and special assistant to the U.S. Commissioner for the Philippines from 1945-46. The film stars Van Heflin, James MacArthur, Rita Moreno, Leopoldo Salcedo and Sidney Clute. Set during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the working title was To Be a Man.[1]
Cry of Battle and War Is Hell were playing at the Texas Theater when Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested there for the murder of President John F. Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit.
Producer Joe Steinberg had a wealthy brother named Harry Stonehill in the Philippines who assisted with the financing of the film. He hired his friends Irving Lerner to direct and Bernard Gordon to write the screenplay. Gordon saw the opportunity to use the screenplay as a comment on American attitudes towards Third World people[2] and attitudes towards masculinity explaining the film's working title of To Be a Man. During the film Dave asks Joe if raping his host's granddaughter made him feel like a man. Joe responded that fighting when you have to and having a woman when you can was feeling like a man. Joe also initiates Dave into manhood by using his winnings in a poker game to give Dave a night with a prostitute. In Dave's first battle, Dave captures a panicked Japanese soldier with Joe grabbing Dave's hands holding his rifle with bayonet that he thrusts into the prisoner.
Rita Moreno's scenes were shot around her flying back to Hollywood to accept her Academy Award for West Side Story. A Filpino designed her dress for the Awards ceremony with Edith Head voting her dress the most original of the night. She returned the Philippines the next day.[3]
Her nude scene in the film attracted a great deal of publicity[4] and had to be filmed with her wearing a dress
Surely Benjamin Appel's novel Fortress in the Rice was more interesting than its static film adaptation Cry of Battle. Van Heflin plays a crusty soldier of fortune fighting with the Philippine partisans during World War II. James MacArthur co-stars as the wealthy, aimless son of a businessman who joins the partisan cause for a lark. He is toughened up by Heflin and romanced by local girl Rita Moreno. Life's just full of surprises, isn't it?
Release Date: October 11, 1963
Distrib: Allied Artists
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