Another film watched for the "House of Hammer" Podcast was "The Camp on Blood Island" which despite it's name is not a horror film, but another in small sequence of war pictures that the studio produced here, though the horror hits had started to come. Despite several elements that you'd consider racist both then, and especially now, the film was a financial success.
The leader of a group of British prisoners in a Japanese Prisoner-of-War camp, Colonel Lambert (Andre Morell)) asks his men to continue to disrupt operations at the camp, despite his knowledge that Emperor Hirohito has surrendered, and the War is over. Whilst they face brutal reprisals for these actions, Commandant Yamamitsu (Ronald Radd) has told Lambert that if Japan loses the war, then he'll execute everyone at the camp, and at a nearby camp where their women and children are being kept. Lambert has successfully kept this information from him so far.
Whilst "Camp on Blood Island" doesn't claim to be a true story, it is based on alleged true events and is perhaps the most brutal film that Hammer had yet produced, with implied beheadings and British soldiers forced to dig their own graves before they were executed. It's a relatively simple story, with Lambert trying to keep a lid on the fact the war is over for as long as he can, even from his own men to avoid them telling the captures. Then a bloody fight for liberation. In that sense, the film isn't bad. I lost track a bit towards the end, on who was who during the escape, but until then I was ... enjoying it is perhaps the wrong word, given how dark it is, but I appreciated it.
Whilst the portrayal of the Japanese actions in the film were objectionable at the time, literally, in the form of the chairman of the Japanese Motion Pictures Producers Association objecting to them, what is unacceptable now is that the key Japanese soldiers are portrayed by non-Japanese actors in offensive make up.
It's reasonably well made and has an interesting story idea, shorn of the sensationalist elements it wouldn't be anything like as impactful. One of the better films I've watched for the podcast, but I can't imagine ever needing to watch it again.
