The Walls of Hell

This gritty, atmospheric war movie dramatizes a chapter of World War II history in which 10,000 Japanese soldiers, fearing execution if they surrendered, disobeyed their own superiors’ orders and barricaded themselves in Manila’s Intramuros section along with a thousand or so unfortunate civilians. The walled city-within-the-city was built by Spanish colonialists from 1590 onward. Leading Allied forces trying to wear the trapped Axis troops’ resistance down is Jock Mahoney as a gruff American officer carrying a big load of guilt from a prior operation gone wrong. Shot in impressive chiaroscuro-lit black-and-white on location, this was a fairly rare U.S. coproduction at the time, though the Philippines would shortly become a hub for English- language exploitation movies (with co-directors Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon among the busiest creators of features designed for both local and overseas audiences). WALLS OF HELL must have been a bittersweet project for de Leon: during WW2 he was forced to make propaganda films by Japanese occupiers even as he secretly worked against them in the underground resistance. – Dennis Harvey