The Camp on Blood Island

As 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. 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. 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.

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. Lambert is forced continually to justify his at times apparently illogical and counter-productive decisions. Matters are not helped by the growing suspicion that the camp harbours a collaborator in its midst.

Van Elst is given the task of chief saboteur, while Anjou passes messages and instructions to the captives via coded sermons. 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. When Allied relief planes finally arrive they find a mere handful of survivors on either side.

• André Morell as Col. Lambert
• Carl Möhner as Piet van Elst
• Edward Underdown as Major Dawes
• Walter Fitzgerald as Cyril Beattie
• Phil Brown as Lt. Commander Peter Bellamy
• Barbara Shelley as Kate Keiller
• Michael Goodliffe as Father Paul Anjou
• Michael Gwynn as Tom Shields
• Ronald Radd as Colonel Yamamitsu, Camp commandant
• Marne Maitland as Captain Sakamura
• Richard Wordsworth as Dr. Robert Keiller
• Mary Merrall as Helen Beattie
• Wolfe Morris as Interpreter
• Michael Ripper as Japanese Driver
• Edwin Richfield as Sergeant-Major
• Geoffrey Bayldon as Foster
• Lee Montague as Japanese Officer
• Jan Holden as Nurse

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. Keys in turn told the story to colleague Michael Carreras who commissioned John Manchip White to write a script. Finance was provided as part of a co-production deal with Columbia Pictures and shooting began at Bray Studios on 14 July 1957.[2]

The film was very successful at the box office, being one of the twelve most popular British movies of the year, despite sometimes hostile reviews[2] and earned rentals of $3.5 million worldwide.[1][3]

Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.[4]

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."[5]

The chairman of the Motion Pictures Producers' Association of Japan, Shiro Kido, who was also the president of Japanese film studio Shochiku, wrote to Columbia Pictures who were distributing the film worldwide to request that the film be banned in the United States as it hurt US-Japanese relationships stating that "It is most unfortunate that a certain country still maintains a hostile feeling toward Japan and cannot forget the nightmare of the Japanese army." and bemoaning the film's advertising.[6]

• The Camp on Blood Island on IMDb
• The Camp on Blood Island at BritMovie (archived)