The Bamboo Prison

The Korean war is known at the "forgotten war" for good reason: People wanted to forget it ever happened. It wasn't popular and it had a less than satisfactory conclusion. As a result, there was not many films on the subject. On the 60th anniversary of the Korean war, TCM showed nearly 24 hours of films on the subject, and this was one of them.

"The Bamboo Prison" is a reasonable attempt to portray the horrors of PoW life for United Nations soldiers in a Chinese prison. Starring Robert Francis as a PoW turned collaborator on a secret mission, this film is filled with all the usual trappings of the anti communist hysteria. The cast is pretty well rounded out with Brian Keith as a fellow PoW, E.G. Marshall as a counterfeit priest, Murray Matheson as the Russian adviser, Diane Foster as his ballerina/communist traitor wife, and Richard Loo as the camp commandant. A young Aaron Spelling plays an uncredited role.

This film makes good fodder for the war film buff or the political historian, but not to be considered a cinematic masterpiece. Surely not a "Stalag 17" or "King Rat".

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.

I guess this is not MANDCHOURIAN CANDIDATE nor PRISONER OF WAR, back in 1954 and starring Ronnie Reagan, both pictures evoking prisoners of war in Korea. This one is just a tremendous time waster, a testimony of its time and period: the Cold War one. It is worth watching for the Leo Gordon's presence, for instance. Not a bad film and rather rare one too. Lewis Seiler gave us all kinds of films and topics, except science fiction. But I agree he lacked a bit of ambition to be as good as Don Siegel or Henry Hathaway. So, if you crave for Cold war, anto communist movies, this one is for you. Just a rare little gem, but not a jewel.

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.

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.