Charles Tingwell is the most stalwart and credible as the prisoners’ CO, but the film is detoured into camp – and, fifty years on, into near-unrevivable obscurity – by the casting of white actors with sing-song accents, rubber eyelids and pantomime villain poses as the Japanese villains: Patrick Wymark as the nasty commandant, Michael Ripper promoted from anonymous goon to prissy fiend as the sadistic corporal and (perhaps worst of all) David Saire as the ranting secret policeman in dark glasses and business suit.
The premise is that Elaine has to be hidden by the ragged prisoners of a Malayan work camp in 1944, though there are waverers in the hut – an embittered misogynist Irishman (Edwin Richfield) with facial scars tries to ‘kiss’ her and a gutless bloke (Peter Welch) who keeps wittering on about his wife and four kids (as it happens, dead in the blitz) is always on he point of blabbing to the guards. It’s among Hammer’s most horrific films, with a cheery tealeaf (Bill Owen) and a likable Jew (Lee Montague) suffering protracted whippings, several major characters machine-gunned in the guts, the two major villains getting off scot-free and hero Sgt Crewe (Jack Hedley) dying with his eyes open and gore all over his face in an only marginally hopeful finish as downed spy Elaine aka Bill (Barbara Shelley) driving off in a stolen jeep supposedly to aid Chinese partisans in one of those missions which could turn the tide of the Pacific War.
THE CAMP ON BLOOD ISLAND MOVIE MOVIE
The Camp on Blood Island was a considerable hit for Hammer in 1958, though it took a few years to get round to delivering a (semi) sequel – with this last gasp of Hammer’s gruesome war movie cycle (later, they considered casting Peter Cushing as a SS bastard in one of their famous unmade projects). My notes on Hammer’s The Secret of Blood Island (aka P.O.W.) (1965)
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