Battle of Blood Island war movie

Battle of Blood Island (1960, United States)

Categories: infantry movies jungle movies landing movies

Battle of Blood Island

Director: Joel Rapp

Czas: 70 minut

Laguages: English

war movies infoAdam 'Frey' Barczynski
2024-04-07 / 1970-01-01

Two Americans survive the landing on the island occupied by Japanese and have to find way to stay alive.

American troops land on one of the Pacific islands, but just after they jump out of the pontoons they are under fire from Japanese soldiers hiding on nearby dunes. Only two GIs survive the landing and hide in the jungle. They find a secluded cave near the coast and hide in there. Japanese patrols search the area, but they don’t find the entrance. Ken and Moe have to survive without any support on island filled with Japanese infantry.

Short movie made with very very very low budget (about 50,000 USD), filmed in just few days in Puerto Rico, during the short break between filming two other movies nearby - Last Woman on Earth and Creature from the Haunted Sea - both directed by independent filmmaker Roger Corman, who produced Battle of Blood Island and played small part at the end. And it shows straight away that it is something made quickly, cheaply and with very limited talent or equipment. Let’s see - poor quality of the material (image and sound), the landing troops consist of few men getting out of pontoon (repeated few times to make it like there were more than few soldiers), poor acting and non-existent special effects (there isn’t even a single shot fired in the film, the actors just pretend that their guns have fired and the sounds were added later).

Of course the movie could have been saved by the interesting plot, but the plot is rather trivial and unrealistic, even though it is based on Philip Roth short story "Expect the Vandals". But the surprising thing is that Roger Corman in one of his interviews stated that Battle of Blood Island "turned out very nicely; it was a good little picture".

Our rating

2.0

Film value

1 / 10

Realism factor

1 / 5

Adventure factor

2 / 5

Historical accuracy

1 / 5

2024-04-07