In which country were the Vietnam scenes in Full Metal Jacket filmed? They were filmed in England. Stanley Kubrick made the film’s Vietnam setting almost entirely from British locations, rather than travelling to Southeast Asia.
The devastated city of Huế was recreated at the abandoned Beckton Gas Works in east London. Other sequences used locations in Cambridgeshire, the Norfolk Broads, and the Isle of Dogs. Kubrick and production designer Anton Furst transformed these places with demolition, landscaping, imported tropical plants, and carefully chosen military equipment.
The film’s Marine training camp was also British: Bassingbourn Barracks in Cambridgeshire stood in for Parris Island, South Carolina. The Norfolk Broads supplied river and countryside imagery for scenes intended to evoke Vietnam’s wetlands.
A common mix-up is assuming that the film was shot in Vietnam, Thailand, or the Philippines because of its convincing atmosphere. In reality, the production ran in England from 1985 to 1986, with British locations doubling for both American and Vietnamese settings.