Back Door to Hell ~ at Runboard.com

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War Film Reviews - 1960s
Back Door to Hell

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warfilmman
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Registered: 02-2005
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Back Door to Hell

Back Door to Hell - 1964 20th Century Fox

You’d have to really search to find a more gritty, downbeat and shorter film than this. At only 68 minutes long Back Door to Hell is hardly an epic.

It was directed by Monte Hellman who made a few pseudo-realistic B-movies in the 60’s. This film, the plot of which is typical of many – 3 American specialists land on Pacific island to learn about Japanese defences prior to American landings, is itself quite odd. Firstly it mixes graphic action with some anti-war postulating, and secondly its much more like modern films like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List than it is its late 50’s early 60’s counterparts. The hand-held camerawork of the battle scenes may have been due to a lack of budget, or more likely it was a deliberate style pioneered if you like, by Hellman. The cast is small, Jimmie Rodgers an American pop and folk singer (he had a few hits in the rock n roll era), plays a Lieutenant struggling to justify continue killing after several years of combat, and third billed is a very young but already engaging Jack Nicholson. The rest of the small cast though unknown are thoroughly believable, in fact some scenes seem improvised as opposed to acted.

The first big battle sequence takes place in a Luzon town, and the documentary style camera work is fantastic, it really reminded me of that famous footage of the running battles between the FFI and the Germans taken during the liberation of Paris. The ending sees the 2 surviving Americans trying to radio a message from a Jap radio station to their HQ, was almost directly copied a few years later in Too Late the Hero. The filming was all done in the Philippines, and its obvious the jungle sounds, sweat and tough terrain is real. I was not expecting to, when I sat down to watch this, but I really did enjoy this film.

2/12/2005, 11:02 pm

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