Mill Creek Entertainment has selected May 4 as the street date for the double-disc, four-film Blu-ray collection titled Scars of War: Vietnam 4-Movie Collection.
Leading off the action is auteur filmmaker Brian De Palma’s 1989 film adaptation of Daniel Lang’s book, Casualties of War, which itself was an expansion of his 1969 New Yorker magazine story about a 1966 incident in which four soldiers raped and murdered a Vietnamese woman and one of their fellow platoon members felt he had to expose their crime.
When the book was published in 1969, a studio bidding war ensued and Warner Bros. ended up with the rights, but after a year of pre-production work the project was ultimately dropped by the studio. Years past and De Palma became involved with the project, but it wasn’t until the runaway success of The Untouchables in 1987 that the resources, and star-power, were finally available for him to push forward with the project.
Think about it, 20-years from start to finish, and there was still more drama in getting the film produced. Because of The Untouchables, Paramount agreed to green light the film, but that too fell apart.
Enter Dawn Steel, former Paramount Studio head, who brought the project to Columbia Pictures … three studios, 20-years and finally it was ready to roll. Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox would star as the real-life characters of the incident (names were changed), with unknown American-Vietnamese Thuy Thu Le cast as the victim, Oanh.
Other cast members include John C. Reilly in his first film role, John Leguizamo, also just starting out in his film career and Don Harvey, who had worked with De Palma on The Untouchables.
The other three films included in the Scars of War: Vietnam 4-Movie Collection Blu-ray release from Mill Creek Entertainment on May 4 are director Alan Parker’s 1984 film adaptation of the William Wharton novel, Birdy (with Matthew Modine, Nicolas Cage and John Harkins), director Louis Malle’s 1985 film release of Alamo Bay (teaming Ed Harris with Amy Madigan, with Ho Nguyen as Dinh) and Michael Douglas stars in one of his early film roles (1971), director Anthony Newley’s Summertree.
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