Main Cast: Stan Shaw, Andrew Stevens, Jim Canning, Michael Lembeck, Craig Wasson
Release Year: 1977
Country: HK/US
Run Time: 127 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Cowritten by director Sidney J. Furie, The Boys in Company C charts the fortunes of five young Marine recruits. Led by Stan Shaw, the quintet is shipped off to Vietnam. The film makes no bones about the demoralizing effect the war has on its participants, nor the pigheadedness of the military higher-ups who think only in terms of body counts and photo ops. Of the five recruits, the most memorable are Michael Lembeck as Vinnie Fazio, the resident wiseguy (the same type of role played by Lembeck's dad Harvey in 1950s war films) and Andrew Stevens as Billy Ray Pike, a straight-arrow type who succumbs to the lure of drugs; the others are played by Craig Wasson, James Canning, and Scott Hylands. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Scott Hylands - Capt. Collins; James Whitmore, Jr. - Lieutenant Archer; Noble Willingham - Sgt. Curry; R. Lee Ermey - Sgt. Loyce; Santos Morales - Sgt. Aquilla; Drew Michaels - Capt. Metcalfe; Karen Hilger - Betsy; Peggy O'Neal - Nancy Bisbee; Vic Diaz - Colonel Trang; Logan Clarke - Bortz; Bob Mallett - Hank; Frederick Matthews - Corporal Spaulding; Helen McNeely - Head Nurse; Ken Metcalfe - Major Royal; Claude Wilson - Roy Foster; Joe Mari Avellana - Colonel Dong; Rick Natkin; Chuck Waters; Michael Cohen - General Sloan
Credit
Sidney J. Furie - Director, Michael Berman - Editor, Frank J. Urioste - Editor, Alan Pattillo - Editor, Jim Benson - Editor, Raymond Chow - Executive Producer, Jaime Mendoza-Nava - Composer (Music Score), Craig Wasson - Songwriter, Tony Artieda - Makeup, Robert Lang - Production Designer, Godfrey A. Godar - Cinematographer, Joseph Zucchero - Production Manager, Andre Morgan - Producer, Danny Daniel - Sound/Sound Designer, Sidney J. Furie - Screenwriter, Rick Natkin - Screenwriter
This war drama, which prefigures the later Full Metal Jacket, follows the lives of five young Marine inductees from their training in boot camp in 1967 through a tour in Vietnam in 1968. Things quickly devolve into a hellish nightmare. Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they purposely lose a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines. However, as they might have known, nothing in Vietnam is as simple as it seems. [1]
Awards
nomination Golden Globe:Best Motion Picture Acting Debut – Male, Andrew Stevens (1979)
Availability
This film has been issued numerous times on video through the decades since the film's release, first in-house via Columbia Pictures, and later through other companies as certain ancillary rights changed hands (it ended up becoming part of the library of ITC Entertainment). Today, although Columbia Pictures still holds the copyright, ITC successor ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. has the major rights, with theatrical distribution by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The current home video/DVD release is by Hen's Tooth under license from ITV.
