Alternative Title in Korea: Oh, Inchon!  (no joke)

“Empty-headed Korean war epic produced by Rev. Sung Myung Moon's Unification Church. Olivier looks like a wax museum figure in his makeup as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.” 

--Leonard Maltin’s 1999 Home & Video Guide  

"As military spectacles go, one of the sorriest in military history."

--Richard Schickel, Time

"The worst movie ever made...a turkey the size of Godzilla."

--Jack Kroll, Newsweek

Directed By: Terrence Young, the same guy who did The Valachi Papers, Wait Until Dark, Thunderball, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and, yes, The Klansmen.

Hey, Isn’t That?: Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, David Janssen, Toshiro Mifune, Rex Reed, Richard Roundtree, and …Laurence Olivier

I break with tradition here to talk not about a movie about cults but a movie made by a cult. Sorry to come off judgmental, but the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies, can fairly easily be classified as a cult, albeit a fairly harmless one. We're talking the classic stereotype here: a church not based on a tradition or scripture that goes back hundreds of years but on a guy saying he talked to God on a mountain top and learned, hey ho, he's the new Messiah.  Not that longevity is the only basis of a sound religious philosophy, but I'll need a little more intellectual proof than that.

It's distressingly difficult to find mention of Inchon in bad movie literature as of late.  Too bad- the movie itself is not only mesmerizingly heinous (Olivier apparently wears lipstick in every scene, continuity errors abound), the story behind it is quite absurd, and far more interesting than the movie itself. 

Sun Myung Moon is from Korea, and is, unsurprisingly, rabidly anti-Communist. Inchon was not merely supposed to be an entertaining movie for entertainment's sake (I said supposed), oh no. It was to inspire the free world to smash Communism. Some people might not have thought there was a worldwide threat of a Communist takeover in 1982, but they didn't have Moon's prophetic powers. He also claimed he saw Jesus himself appear in the clouds above Korea during the war, and thus the making of the movie was the will of God.

As for how Moon was able to lure such talent as Jerry Goldsmith, Terrence Young, and Laurence Olivier, it can be summed up in one word - cash. Literally. The almost $50 million dollar budget was rumored to have been paid mostly in cash. 

The incredible amounts of money wasted on this inept and turgid movie is legendary. Laurence Olivier is reputed to not have known anything about the story or production other than he was being paid $1 million to play Douglas MacArthur.  Thousands of extras were employed.  After the film was completed and slated to play at the Cannes Film Festival, 'Special Adviser' Moon decided he didn't like the opening credits and ordered them retooled, to the tune of $300,000.  A $1 million sweepstakes was offered to anyone who would see it.

Moon seemed cavalier about the money, calling the production "Victorious!" even in the face of disastrous box office and hideous reviews.  The funds were, after all, not raised by him, but members of the Unification Church, selling flowers and candy on street corners, giving their lives selflessly to their cause.  Moon apparently also relied on the members for publicity, ordering them distribute thousands of fliers, in addition to all their other duties, from which they were not excused.

Despite the pool of unpaid flacks and unquestioning audience members, Inchon was a complete catastrophe in both critical and financial terms. As John Travolta and the Church of Scientology discovered recently, no matter how many members you have, it's still not a good idea for a controversial religion to fund a Hollywood vanity production.