When this came out it became one of Hammer's most popular movies, and let to a spawn of follow ups, including direct sequels (The Secret of Blood Island), another tough Far East war tale (Yesterday's Enemy) and a series of movies about the British battling oriental atrocities (The Stranglers of Bombay, The Terror of the Tongs). But for a long time it was hard to get hold of a copy of this, in part because it was a controversial film.
It's full on, there's no doubt about that, full of executions, torture and nihilism; it's racist, too, with its depiction of Japanese (played by actors of a variety of races) as vicious nasty savages without a single redeeming quality, and a half-caste female prisoner who is man hungry But it can't be dismissed either because it was based on a true story and all the things shown did happen at one stage or another.
It has a strong central gimmick - World War Two is over and the Brit POWs know it but they're scared of their Japanese guards finding out and killing everyone. So Andre Morrell decides to keep it secret... a course of action which winds up with most of this prisoners dead anyway, either trying to escape, being executed in retaliation or killed in an uprising, or dying of disease and torture. Barbara Steele sees her husband mowed down in front of her eyes, six prisoners have their heads chopped off, Morrell accidentally kills his friend. All for little purpose. (Morrell's plan, which he doggedly sticks to, would have to rank up there with Duane Jones' plan in Night of the Living Dead and Liam Neeson's in The Grey as Worst Plans of a Movie Hero in Cinema History).
It's full throttled stuff, briskly directed as ever by Val Guest with a very strong cast, led by Morrell and the sensible sensual Barbara Shelley.
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