The novelisation of the script sold over two million copies and has been described as "arguably the most successful piece of merchandise ever licensed by Hammer." The film was very successful at the box office, being one of the most popular British movies of the year, despite sometimes hostile reviews and earned rentals of $3.5 million worldwide. Finance was provided as part of a co-production deal with Columbia Pictures and shooting began at Bray Studios on 14 July 1957. Keys in turn told the story to colleague Michael Carreras who commissioned John Manchip White to write a script. The film was allegedly based on a true story which Hammer executive Anthony Nelson Keys heard from a friend who had been a prisoner of the Japanese. Ronald Radd as Colonel Yamamitsu, Camp commandant.When Allied relief planes finally arrive they find a mere handful of survivors on either side. When the endgame becomes inevitable, the prisoners rise up against their captors in a bloody insurrection, feeling that they have nothing left to lose and the survival of a few is better than the alternative. Van Elst is given the task of chief saboteur, while Anjou passes messages and instructions to the captives via coded sermons. Matters are not helped by the growing suspicion that the camp harbours a collaborator in its midst. Lambert is forced continually to justify his at times apparently illogical and counter-productive decisions. Lambert's unilateral assumption of military authority is not universally welcomed, as other prisoners, including Dutch soldier Piet van Elst (Möhner), former governor Cyril Beattie (Fitzgerald) and priest Paul Anjou ( Michael Goodliffe), chafe against his quasi-dictatorial personality, obstinacy and refusal to listen to any views other than his own. Colonel Lambert (Morell), the authoritarian leader of the prisoners, deems that they must sabotage communications between the camp and the outside world and arm themselves in however makeshift a way in readiness for a final showdown. When the prisoners hear through underground sources that Japan has indeed surrendered, they mobilise themselves to try to prevent the news from reaching the commandant. PlotĪs the Pacific War draws to an end, the commandant of the Blood Island prisoner-of-war camp has let it be known that should Japan surrender, he will order the massacre of the entire captive population. It received some contemporary allegations of going beyond the bounds of the acceptable and necessary into gratuitous sensationalism.Ī prequel, The Secret of Blood Island, was released in 1964. On its release, the film was promoted with the tag line "Jap War Crimes Exposed!", alongside a quote from Lord Russell of Liverpool, "We may forgive, but we must never forget", and an image of a Japanese soldier wielding a samurai sword.įrom its powerful opening sequence of a man being forced to dig his own grave before being shot dead, an intertitle follows, stating "this is not just a story - it is based on brutal truth", The Camp on Blood Island is noted for a depiction of human cruelty and brutality which was unusually graphic for a film of its time. The film is set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Japanese-occupied British Malaya and deals with the brutal, sadistic treatment of Allied prisoners by their captors.
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