Late in the day follow up to The Camp of Blood Island (I don't think it's a sequel) is one of the few Hammer films to have a female protagonist - Barbara Shelley crashes in Malaya in 1944 near a prison. She's got super urgent information about an "invasion of Malaya" that is going to happen soon (that was a long way off in 1944... I wish they'd put in more thought to the Macguffin).
She hides in the camp, so pretends to be a man... which is a silly premise but has potential, and having made the decision to use it Hammer should have committed. You can see the scenes - "take your clothes off", "share a bed", all that stuff. But the movie is very restrained on the sex issue - only one prisoner tries to molest her and he's wounded. She has a quasi flirtation with some guy but that's about it.
The film is weighted too much toward s the men as well - Charles Tingwell as the top British officer, Patrick Wymark. All the acting is very good.
There's no Japanese. Michael Rimmer is in yellowface. Come on Hammer there must have been some Japanese around.
There's a little sadism and torture (and implied rape of Shelley by the Japanese I think) but it's not as full on as Camp.
No comments:
Post a Comment