Five Gates to Hell (1959)
Directed by James Clavell
Genres - Action, Adventure, Drama, War |
Sub-Genres - Adventure Drama, Combat Films, Melodrama |
Run Time - 98 min. |
Countries - United States |
MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Eleanor Mannikka
The celebrated author of 1975's Shogun, James Clavell, directs (and produced and wrote) this effective, if low-budget World War II drama. The story takes place in French Indochina (later Vietnam) where a group of two Red Cross doctors and seven nurses are captured by a guerrilla band and taken to the side of a grievously ill warlord. The realities of war and its effects on everyone are brought forward as the doctors are eventually killed, and the nurses use sex as a means of escaping their captors. Brutal scenes of the stabbing of a patient under surgery and the symbolic murder of a nun are qualified by the even-handed portrayal of the damage war does to the human side of human nature.
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Keywords
war, Asia, atrocity, capture, China, custom [habit or practice], death, disease, doctor/nurse, escape, group, guerrilla, hospital, hostage, invasion, kidnapping, lord, mercenary, nun, plague, pleasure, prison, security-guard, sensitivity, sexual, soldier, war-atrocities, warlord
