Robert Francis & Brian Keith in "The Bamboo Prison" (1954)
110In North Korea, a group of captured American soldiers is held in a prisoner-of-war camp in North Korea in the final phase of the Korean War. Cat and mouse games of intelligence, counter-intelligence/spy, counter spy/agents, double agents activity ensue.
The captured American soldiers, including Cpl. Brady (Brian Keith), arrive from a death march at the POW camp manned by Chinese soldiers. Sick and starving, the new arrivals are greeted warmly by other American prisoners and Father Francis Dolan (E.G. Marshall). However, Brady and his men are shocked to find one prisoner, Sgt. John Rand (Robert Francis), being given preferential treatment as an openly traitorous collaborator, or "progressive." Prisoners who show sympathy with the communist cause are given special privileges, but are understandably hated by the other prisoners, who see them as traitors. Rand gets a bed to sleep on while the others make do on the floor, with Rand refusing even to surrender his cot for a deathly ill prisoner.
However, Rand reveals his true colors to Brady a few days later. Both are in fact agents, Rand using his "progressive" status and ability to move about the camp freely to locate documents incriminating the Communist Chinese of POW atrocities and of Soviet involvement in the war effort, evidence Brady is expected to deliver to his superiors.
The camp "brain-washer", American traitor Clayton (Murray Matheson), is permitted to have his beautiful Russian wife, Tanya (Dianne Foster), a former Russian ballerina, live in camp. Sergeant Rand, one of the communist sympathizers (known as Progressives), becomes more than a little friendly and falls in love with her, and his special privileges permit him to go to her house. However, she is not a communist sympathizer. Rand hopes to turn her and gain access to Clayton's top-secret files.
Meanwhile. the camp priest, Father Dolan, is actually an impostor, trying to glean information through confession. Despite their differences, Rand helps his rival, Corporal Brady, to escape.
At the end of the war, Sgt. Rand stays in North Korea as an American intelligence agent posing as a man disillusioned with the capitalist system and its exploitation of the working man.
A 1954 American Black & White Korean War film directed by Lewis Seiler, produced by Bryan Foy, written by Edwin Blum and Jack DeWitt, cinematography by Burnett Guffey, starring Robert Francis, Brian Keith, E G Marshall, Jerome Courtland, Dianne Foster, Earle Hyman, Jack Kelly, Richard Loo, Keye Luke, Murray Matheson, King Donovan, Dick Jones, and Pepe Hern.
Robert Francis and Jack Kelly appeared in "They Rode West" (1954). When Keye Luke's character turns up, one of the prisoners shouts "Here comes Charlie Chan!" as a warning. Luke famously played Lee Chan, the number one son, in the Charlie Chan films.
Co-writer Jack DeWitt had an unremarkable career, save perhaps for the interesting low-budget noir "Portland Exposé" (1957), until striking gold with "A Man Called Horse" (1970) and its sequels. The other credited writer, Edwin Blum, co-wrote the screenplay for the similarly structured "Stalag 17" (1953), but that famous Billy Wilder movie was a close adaptation of the play rather than an original work. Blum, however, was very active in Democratic Party politics, including the Adlai Stevenson and Helen Gahagan campaigns and, according to the IMDb, may even have coined the phrase "Tricky Dick," in reference to Gahagan's opponent, Richard Nixon.
Forgotten star Robert Francis died in an air crash at 25. On July 31, 1955, Francis was piloting a borrowed Beechcraft Bonanza, which stalled and crashed in a parking lot where it burst into flames, killing its three occupants. He appeared in only four Hollywood films, all with military themes: "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), "They Rode West" (1954), "The Bamboo Prison" (1954) and "The Long Gray Line" (1955).
The US Army denied their co-operation to the producers. The posters and arm band have Chinese characters on them instead of Korean characters.
By 1954 tales of the horrors and depredations that Allied prisoners endured were well known and widely circulated in America. But this was the midst of the Cold War and films about the ruthless Red Menace were pretty popular that year. Due to Cold War hysteria, the film was falsely accused of communist sympathies, with several US cities banning it, although the film is clear that Sgt. Rand was actually a spy for the US, pretending to be a sympathizer.
The brainwashing and abuse of American prisoners of war during the Korean War was also dramatized in "P.O.W." (1953), "Prisoner of War" (1954, starring Ronald Reagan), and "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962, starring Frank Sinatra).
A fascinating, based on historical fact, artifact and, all things considered, pretty good in spite of its being classically anticommunist in mindset, a relic of bygone and begone years. At best a curiosity to see Brian Keith and Henry Morgan in early roles.