Back to the Future

When director Brian De Palma was in Thailand last summer making “Casualties of War,” he picked up Elia Kazan’s autobiography one evening and was surprised to read about a Kazan film he’d seen 17 years earlier and forgotten--”The Visitors.” More surprising: The story of the Kazan movie was the sequel to the tale that Palma was then shooting.

“Casualties,” due out Aug. 18, is based on a 1969 New Yorker article and later a book by Daniel Lang, reporting on the rape and murder of a Vietnamese woman by a group of American servicemen, and their subsequent court-martial. Sean Penn plays the leader of the rapist-murderers, Michael J. Fox the soldier who turns them in.

“Judging from Kazan’s biography, he had also read the (New Yorker) piece,” De Palma told us. “Kazan sat down with his son Chris, who wrote the screenplay, and said, ‘What would have happened when these guys came out of jail?’ ”

Kazan shot “The Visitors” on 16-millimeter film and an ultra-low-budget, according to trade reports at the time. It was given limited release in 1972 and got generally negative reviews.

“The Visitors” starred Steve Railsback, Chico Martinez and James Woods in his film debut--the whistle-blower role now being reprised by Fox.