The Camp on Blood Island  

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The Camp on Blood Island is a 1958 British World War II film, directed by Val Guest for Hammer Film Productions and starring André Morell, Carl Möhner, Edward Underdown and Walter Fitzgerald.

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. 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.

From 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. It received some contemporary allegations of going beyond the bounds of the acceptable and necessary into gratuitous sensationalism.

A prequel, The Secret of Blood Island, was released in 1964.

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Plot

The film is set in the days immediately after the Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies in a recorded radio address (called the Jewel Voice Broadcast (玉音放送, Gyokuon-hōsō) across the Empire on August 15 1945, marking the end of the war in the Pacific. Crucially, this news has not reached the Japanese at the Blood Island prisoner-of-war camp, where the commandant has told Colonel Lambert, the senior Allied officer, that he will order the massacre of the entire population of the camp, and of a nearby camp for women and children, if Japan loses the war. The news of the end of the war is known to Colonel Lambert, and former rubber planter Piet van Elst [Carl Möhner], A.K.A. 'Dutch,' who heard in on the prisoner's secret radio receiver (operated by Dutch).


Colonel Lambert (Morell) does not inform most of the other prisoners, but decides that they must prevent the Japanese from learning the truth. He arranges for the Japanese radio to be sabotaged, and sends Dr. Robert Keiller to try to reach a Malay village, where partisans will be able to get a message to the allies. These activities lead to savage reprisals by the Japanese, with threats of worse to come. Col. Lambert is the commanding officer, so he is expected to give orders. However the other prisoners do not know of camp commandant Colonel Yamamitsu's threat to kill all prisoners, or that the war is over. They begin to question Lambert's actions, since asking the camp doctor to escape and provoking the Japanese with acts of sabotage seem irrational acts.

Having been forced continually to justify his at times apparently illogical and counter-productive decisions, Col. Lambert explains the situation to some senior prisoners, including former governor Cyril Beattie (Walter Fitzgerald) and priest Paul Anjou (Michael Goodliffe), who had begun to question his obstinacy and refusal to listen to any views other than his own. Former governor Cyril Beattie thinks Lambert's approach is wrong, and that they should tell the Japanese, and throw themselves on Yamamitsu's mercy. He is partly motivated by the fact that he has a wife and child in the women's camp. Father Paul Anjou has been passing messages to the women via Mrs. Beattie, whilst delivering burial services. He uses Latin, which the Japanese do not understand. Critically, Mrs. Beattie is the only female prisoner who knows Latin. Beattie tries to see Yamamitsu, but is ridiculed and beaten by Captain Sakamura (Anglo Indian actor James Marne Kumar Maitland), then closely watched by the other officers.


Radio spares have arrived, and it is imperative that the Japanese do not repair their radio. At great personal risk, Dutch approaches the Japanese radio shack just as the engineer has completed repairs and starts to receive music. The Japanese radio engineer leaves, presumably to inform his superiors, and Dutch short circuits the radio, despite a Japanese guard sitting down for a smoke outside the door. The officers arrive, and whilst they are distracted chastising the guard (for sitting down instead of patrolling, and smoking on duty) Dutch escapes through the window. Lambert and the others see a plane overhead, and hear it crash. Lambert tells the priest he is praying that the pilot died, so that no news reaches the Japanese.

But the pilot, Lt. Commander Peter Bellamy (US actor Phil Brown) is not dead. Assuming everyone knows war is over, he flags down a Japanese truck, but is unable to communicate with the Japanese. Captured Dr. Keiller is lying in the truck and manages to tell Bellamy not reveal that the war is over. The truck stops at the women's camp and Keiller jumps off to try to see his wife, knowing that he will be executed anyway for trying to escape. He sees his wife, but as they come together at the wire he is shot dead. The Japanese return to the men's camp, with Bellamy, and Keiller's body. Bellamy is questioned and beaten, but does not reveal the news.

Since Keillor's escape was unsuccessful, word has not reached the Malay resistance, so the Allies are still unaware of the situation on Blood Island. Someone else has to try, and Col. Lambert says he will go that night. There is some debate, with Dutch saying it should be him, as he speaks Malay and knows the route to the village, which involves an arduous swim. Bellamy thinks he should go, as he is in better physical condition, despite his beating, not having been a prisoner for three years. Col. Lambert overrules them, but needs someone who speaks Malay, and asks Father Anjou to pass a message via Mrs. Beattie for Mrs. Keillor to be under the water tower at the women's camp at midnight. Anjou tries, but the person he is burying turns out to be Nrs. Beattie, so he cannot convey the message.

Bellamy knows he has a better chance of making it than anyone, so he escapes from a working party, leading to the beheading of six hostages. After initially trying to stop him, Dutch goes with him. They evade the chasing Japanese, but Dutch is caught half way across a road by an approaching truck. After menacing him with a machine gun, the Japanese driver (Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper) laughs and offers him a cigarette, telling him that the war is over. It seems the driver is bringing dispatches. Bellamy and Dutch overpower the driver and steal the truck. After hiding all day, they try to rendezvous with Mrs. Keillor; but she is not under the water tower, as Father Anjou could not give her the message. Bellamy breaks into the camp, kills a Japanese officer who is with one of the female prisoner (who the women suspect is a collaborator) and forces her to take him to Mrs Keillor. They escape the camp, but Dutch is killed holding off the Japanese guards. Bellamy and Mrs. Keillor eventually make it to the Malay village, which implies that they will alert the Allies to the situation.

Back at the camp, Col. Lambert aprises the NCOs of the situation. Not knowing if the escapees have reached the Malay village or not, and forced to assume no help will come, Lambert tells the NCOs to instruct their men to arm themselves in any way possible, but with small weapons. He issues a few corroded grenades the officers have been hiding. The next day the Japanese bring Van Elst's body back and take another six prisoners for execution, including selecting Major Dawes from the officer's hut. Beattie asks Sakamura to take him to Commander Yamamitsu, insisting that he has something vital to tell him. The officers think he might be about to reveal the news of the war's end, but they cannot be sure, and there is nothing they can do except prepare for a fight. In Yamamitsu's office, Beattie pulls the pin out of a grenade, killing Sakamura, Yamamitsu and himself. Now, the prisoners have no choice but to attack the guards. A bloody fight ensues, in which Lambert inadvertently kills Major Dawes, who has seized a Japanese machine gun in a tower. Lambert lob's a grenade into the tower, thinking the gun is manned by a Japanese soldier. At this point, Allied paratroopers are dropped on the camp, and the fight is over. We learn that the women's camp was taken without a shot being fired, so whilst many of the men are dead, their actions have at least saved the surviving women and children.

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Cast

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