The five gates to hell are five fortresses in Vietnam, built by the French to safeguard their colony, which in the insurrection war against the French were taken over by Vietnamese war lords. The strongest of them is the main scene of this drama, where eight nurses and two doctors are held prisoners with the intention to have a dying old war lord cured of his cancer, which of course the doctors fail to do, which they realise and the necessity of their escape before it is too late. The escape is not entirely successful, as there are casualties among them, but the ladies manage to get out and then have to face running the gauntlet to get into safety some 30 miles away. Their struggle and ordeals is the main drama of the film, which reminds quite a lot of "A Town Like Alice" a few years earlier, for the trials of the women. James Clavell, who wrote and made the film, always knew what he was describing, as he himself had been a war prisoner with the Japanese. His films like his novels are replenished with action and very dramatic developments, and they are all readable and impressive also as films. This is one of the best, and he would go on making more films for ten more years, until he concentrated wholly on only novels. The most impressive acting here is actually the villain, Neville Brand, a very brutal war hero but with human feelings, and the development of his character and his downfall is the most interesting part of the film, although it is not quite credible. Why do villains in films always have to be shot and killed over and over again? Can't they never do it right the first time?
