The Bamboo Prison

Brian Keith is adequate here as the all-American "Brady" who is taken to a POW camp during the Korean War. It's there that encounters the ostensibly collaborative "Rand" (Robert Francis) who has befriended "Tanya" (Dianne Foster) who is, herself, married to another whose loyalties are distinctly questionable. Pretty quickly we learn that nobody is quite who they seem and with a backdrop of severe torture, manipulation and fear we find that each of the Americans now suspect the other and are constantly trying to vie for the upper hand - all under the outwardly benign gaze of "Fr. Dolan" (EG Marshall) who has, himself, been imprisoned by the communists. It's actually quite a simple story designed to highlight the atrocities carried out against the Allies by the commies despite the provisions of the Geneva Convention. It has plenty of plausibility issues, though. None of the prisoners look especially emaciated - clean shaven with Colgate smiles; the casting is pretty weak and the dialogue does little to develop the sense of peril that the imagery lays before us. There isn't much chemistry on display, either, and I found the on/off romance stuff just clogged up what could have been quite an intriguing fifth-column, who-to-trust affair. Essentially this is a piece of propaganda and though doubtless routed in aspects of truth, to some degree, it is just a bit too much of a blunt instrument for me.

It is certainly interesting to see The Bamboo Prison from a 62 year old perspective from the start of the Korean War. I doubt this film would ever be made today. Hogan's Heroes gives this film a run for verisimilitude.

By 1954 tales of the horrors and depredations that Allied prisoners endured were well known and widely circulated in America. But this was the midst of the Cold War and films about the ruthless Red Menace were pretty popular that year. But this one really stands out. It's even got a little romance in it if you can believe.

Robert Francis plays a 'progressive' which means here a prisoner who's seen the light and is now a thoroughgoing Das Kapital believing Marxist converted through reading the 'truth' about Communism in the POW camp. He's in charge of a barracks full of reactionaries meaning the prisoners who resist indoctrination and one of his rewards is decent food and a cot to sleep on.

Brian Keith is one of the other prisoners who is an agent filtered in from the allied side to get information on POW treatment as the peace talks go endlessly on at Panmunjom. How he gets it out is for you to see the film for.

There are some Russians here as well, supervising in the near distance, Commissar Murray Matheson and his wife, former Ballerina Dianne Foster who admits she married him to advance in the Soviet society. Girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. She takes a look at the hunky Francis and she and Francis are kanoodling hot and heavy. Of course he's got his own agenda as does she, but talk about prisoner perks. William Holden didn't have it that good with the Russian women prisoners in Stalag 17.

These Communists just like the Nazis in Stalag 17 have an informer among the prisoners. But when you see who it is, the reaction of the movie-going public in 1954 was, is there nothing these dirty Reds won't stoop to?

Of course the depredations and horrors in Korean POW camps were quite real. North Korea sad to say has had time stand still and they've made the slogan for Korea as the Hermit Kingdom quite real. Like Prussia it's a state supporting an army. This film however is laughable in its Cold War mindset, a relic of bygone and begone years.

Films about the Korean War show that it was far more a conflict of competing ideologies than of competing nations, hence the frequent stress on prisoners' vulnerability to brainwashing. As in 'Stalag 17' - by the same author - rest assured (SPOILER COMING) that when a prisoner seems to be selling out it's always just a ruse.

The main asset of this muddled espionage business in a Chinese prison camp during the Korean War is the great good humour among the prisoners, who are amazingly cheerful all the way although that life in Chinese war prison camps must have been worse than hell, but they make it a sparkling entertainment by all their innovations, pranks, jokes and shows, giving almost the impression that it must have been a jolly ride to happen to be imprisoned there in such good company. Of course, the grimness and cruelty is also there, those Chinese guards and officers are not to be trifled with, they can't appreciate jokes, and when they find out they are having their legs pulled they start shooting. One of the best scenes is the great fight among the prisoners towards the end which plunges the whole camp into chaos, just to enable the escape of one prisoner, but that is really jolly good fun. The intrigue is interesting, the unexpected love affair offers some change to the greyness of prison life, and all the actors are convincing enough, especially the prisoners.

This is an underrated POW film about the Korean War. There is a great deal of political content, as well as spy vs spy content, most of which is very entertaining. Of course, I did not understand this film very well when I first it over 65 years ago as a child, but I certainly fully understand it now. The film has a few surprises that I will not give away, and is highly watchable. Recommended.