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In the Korean War, “a division of marines survive a battle with the Chinese army but find themselves stranded without contact on the wrong side of the front.” - IMDb; www.imdb.com/title/tt0239594/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers; retrieved 26/05/2015.
By Eric YJ Choi - Korean Film Archive
The Marines Who Never Returned (Lee Man-hi, 1963) is considered a classic among Korean cinema. It is widely regarded as the quintessential Korean War epic and is the oldest surviving work by acclaimed director Lee Man-hi. This film was even named the 30th greatest Korean film of all time in a survey conducted by the Korean Film Archive in 2014 in which 62 film scholars, critics, filmmakers etc participated.
What is less widely known is that this film was exported all around the world under various titles. It was first dubbed into English and released in the United States in 1966 under the title Marine Battleground before subsequently being released in Germany under the title Marinedivision Feuerdrache and in Italy as Marines Battleground among many other countries...
Marine Battleground is by no means the definitive version of The Marines Who Never Returned and should not be considered as such. It suffers from the usual problems of international versions of Korean films back then, the main one being the amount of material that is edited out in an effort to decrease the runtime (The Marines Who Never Returned is 110 min long while Marine Battleground is 85 min long). Rather, it is a fascinating reassembling of a classic. Its inclusion of newly shot footage that takes place in Vietnam featuring American actors is unusual and yet frames the original work in a bold and unexpected way while providing viewers with a what-if scenario for our beloved character, Young-hui. It may be considered blasphemy by purists, especially since it is unclear whether director Lee Man-hi approved of these changes, but its existence does not hurt the integrity of the original. If anything, its existence opens up new avenues to explore The Marines Who Never Returned.
Korean War 1950 - 1953
South Korean Marine Corps
Korea