Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Blood and Steel (1959)

Director: Bernard L. Kowalski

Starring: John Lupton, Ziva Rodann, Brett Halsey, James Edwards, John Brinkley, Allen Jung, Clarence Lung, Bill Saito, James Hong

More info: IMDb

Tagline: 4 fighting men and a girl trapped in 1,000 of green hell!

Plot: Four Seabees land on "Gizo Island" in 1943 in order to survey it for an airstrip to be built for the U.S. during the war against the Japanese. On the island is a contingent of Japanese soldiers bored with their occupation. Eventually both sides clash.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

Here's another low budget WWII actioner that I watched today.  I guess I was in the mood. Like the other one I watched, SILENT RAIDERS (1954), this one's only about an hour long so I didn't waste much time on this one. It's actually a nice step up from SILENT in that there's a lot more action, the jungle setting is MUCH better than the So. Cal. substituting for Europe location in SILENT.  I'm going to stop there with the comparison because this is a better film despite its flaws.  BLOOD, shot in widescreen which helps, has plenty of action and a pretty good score by Calvin Jackson.  The Japanese are poorly portrayed and James Edwards was often working way to hard as an actor.  For an hour long low budget WWII flick this isn't too bad but once you've seen it you're likely to quickly forget it.  My Grandfather served as a Seabee during WWII in the pacific theater, and I'm sure that if he watched this he'd find it amusing, disposable entertainment.

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