Five Gates to Hell (1959)

Powerful

It is a performances centric movie

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

A rather trashy early account of the Vietnam War when it was the French still fighting it is Five Gates To Hell. It's as if someone got all those yellow peril warnings out to create this film.If you believe this the Vietminh were really interested in our women folk for sex. Well proportioned females weren't all that prevalent among their own women.Neville Brand plays a Vietminh guerrilla leader who kidnaps a hospital staff to treat a local Vietminh leader, doctors and nurses. The patient dies and the hospital staff effects an escape, the doctors die but the women wind up defending French colonialism and the virtue of white womanhood with the exception of nurse Nobu McCarthy.A number of reviewers have already commented on Nancy Kulp, better known as Ms. Jane Hathaway of the Beverly Hillbillies lobbing handgrenades like she Nolan Ryan on the pitcher's mound.As if this oriental depravity isn't enough these people are even raping nuns among the nurses.Pure unadulterated trash.

I was against film censorship and film ratings less than zero until I saw the aptly named Five Gates of Hell.As a previous critic noted, 'A shabby little shocker'. When asked to name a movie I wanted to 'unwatch', this is at the top of my list. Oh, and just when you thought the sociopathic film couldn't be worse, there's Nancy Kulp(Miss Jane Hathaway from the Bev Hillbillies) with a hand grenade, and Neville Brand in oriental blackface. If you're interested in the fates of women in World War II and Asian prisoner-of-war camps, I suggest you watch the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) miniseries 'Tenko'.

George Bernard Shaw once referred to Puccini's Tosca as that "shabby little shocker." That's an apt description for this Vietnam war film written and directed by James Clavell. Every manner of atrocity is committed in this unredeemable mess: garroting, rape, human boiling, crucifixion, pick-ax murder, and of course point blank shooting. Sure, it's a bloody war, but Clavell goes for the obvious sensational effect, without meaningful human values, much in the same way we've seen more recently in slasher pics.Clavell manages to elicit terrible performances from his usually-commendable team of actors. Patricia Owens as a cynical nurse and Shirley Knight as a sanctimonious nun win the awards for bad acting against fierce competition. And for all the murders he commits, the usually tough Neville Brand is surprisingly innocuous, although it doesn't help that he's forced to play a Vietnamese leader. Greta Chi gives the best performance; doesn't that say it all?There's some consolation at the end of the film when the women take arms against their captors. It's rather cathartic, I have to admit. But for sheer unpleasantness for most of its running time, this is a movie to avoid.

The day I was watching this movie, I went into labour with my second son, who has now passed away., therefore this particular movie has stuck itself into my memory, and when a friend told me today of this website, I had to see if it was listed....and it was.I never actually saw the entire movie, and would now love to purchase it if at all possible.Thank you. Mary Anne Sibley