This film opens laughably with a blurb that says "wherever possible, stock footage was used to show the battles to keep this film an authentic portrayal" when we all know that was done to keep things cheap. The battle footage even more heavily relies on other war movies like TORA TORA TORA, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, and a Japanese movie STORM OVER THE PACIFIC.
Though this constant use of stock footage wasn't too obvious when this film endlessly reran on TBS (often in its elongated form which depicted the Coral Sea Battle), I remember thinking that I was really cultured and smart when I found out about a lot of the source footage. This film unfortunately opened the flood gates for Umberto Lenzi to turn around and make two other World War 2 duds the next couple years following the same formula.
However, this film is not completely worthless by any stretch, as it covers the battle in an interesting way that'll be informative and captivating for children (like I was at the time I first saw this). It also includes a shockingly good (for the time) split-screen effect where they put the shot down pilot in the water with 16 year old footage of STORM IN THE PACIFIC playing in front of him. I've seen this movie dozens of times and analyzed the shot closely, and I can't find the seam anywhere. It's one of the best visual effects before the digital age made accomplishing that fairly easy, and helps actually sell that the Japanese carrier destruction footage was actually filmed for this movie.
An interesting curio, to say the least.
Though this constant use of stock footage wasn't too obvious when this film endlessly reran on TBS (often in its elongated form which depicted the Coral Sea Battle), I remember thinking that I was really cultured and smart when I found out about a lot of the source footage. This film unfortunately opened the flood gates for Umberto Lenzi to turn around and make two other World War 2 duds the next couple years following the same formula.
However, this film is not completely worthless by any stretch, as it covers the battle in an interesting way that'll be informative and captivating for children (like I was at the time I first saw this). It also includes a shockingly good (for the time) split-screen effect where they put the shot down pilot in the water with 16 year old footage of STORM IN THE PACIFIC playing in front of him. I've seen this movie dozens of times and analyzed the shot closely, and I can't find the seam anywhere. It's one of the best visual effects before the digital age made accomplishing that fairly easy, and helps actually sell that the Japanese carrier destruction footage was actually filmed for this movie.
An interesting curio, to say the least.