The Camp on Blood Island * (1958, André Morell, Carl Möhner, Walter Fitzgerald, Barbara Shelley, Edward Underdown, Michael Goodliffe) – Classic Movie Review 8684

Director Val Guest’s brutal and controversial British exploitation movie for Hammer Films – the 1958 The Camp on Blood Island – shows the Brits in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Malaya trying desperately to keep the news of the end of the war from the sadistic commandant Yamamitsu (Ronald Radd), who has sworn to kill them all if Japan surrenders.

So Dutch planter ‘Dutch’ (Carl Möhner) smashes the camp radio. Then some prisoners make a break for it, but British officer Colonel Lambert (André Morell), along with the recently-widowed Kate (Barbara Shelley) in the women’s prison, organises the remaining prisoners into an all-out attack on the evil Japanese guards, using their home-made, do-it-yourself armoury to join Dutch in arming the prisoners.

Even now this seems a repellent film, worrying sado-masochist horror entertainment based on real suffering, and, quite honestly, it is not very well done either. Some likeable actors give stalwart performances, particularly Morell, but overall it is shoddy and disreputable, with the low budget and studio shooting bringing Val Guest problems.

Sequel: The Secret of Blood Island (1965), with Jack Hedley, Barbara Shelley and Patrick Wymark.

André Morell in The Camp on Blood Island (1958).

Also in the cast are Edward Underdown, Michael Goodliffe, Walter Fitzgerald, Phil Brown, Richard Wordsworth, Marne Maitland, Michael Gwynn, Mary Merrall, Wolfe Morris, Edwin Richfield, Lee Montague, Peter Wayn, Michael Brill, Barry Lowe, Max Butterfield, Alan McNaughtan, Michael Ripper, Howard Williams, Michael Dea, Anthony Chinn, S Goh, Geoffrey Bayldon, Jan Holden and Betty Cooper.

It was made at Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England, and at Callow Hill Sandpit, Virginia Water, Surrey, England, for the mining sequences.

The Camp on Blood Island is directed by Val Guest, is made by Hammer Films, is released by Columbia, is written by Jon Manchip White (story and screenplay) and Val Guest (screenplay), shot in black and white by Jack Asher, produced by Anthony Hinds, scored by Gerard Schurmann and designed by John Stoll.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8684

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