Shocking for its time

Less brutal than the book but Val Guest direction keeps the tension high and the pace is strong enough that you ignore that British actors are playing some of the key Japanese roles. Set in 1945 the senior Allied commander of the POW camps desperately tries to keep from the Japanese commander that the wat is over as he fears the latter will slaughter all prisoners if he knows Japan has lost.Barbara Steele stands out as the strongest female role though all the cast were believable except for the less than menacing Japanese commander. Val Guest other Hammer film and of better structure and more forceful acting is Yesterdays Enemy. Both films were highly rated when released and rightly so for the post war audience. This was the first time the home crowd was shown the brutality of the Japanese towards prisoners.