Friday, August 12, 2022

Prisoner of Japan (1942)

A reasonable early war film with unmistakable though not overbearing propaganda overtones.

David (Alan Baxter) appears to be a genial Westerner living on a South Sea island with his mixed race wife Loti (Corinna Mura). Certainly a number of US sailors are taken in, and even let slip a secret bit of information. That is a shame as David's set-up is a complete sham. Really the island has a secret Japanese base with a radio direction finder run by the sinister Matsuru (Ernst Deutsch). The US Navy soon loses another ship to Japanese bombers.

Toni (Gertrude Michael) turns up at the island hoping to reunite with David who she met once, though in his distressed alcoholic state he can hardly remember anyone. Toni and David are soon fighting Matsuru to prevent the Japanese attacking and destroying an Allied convoy...

Quite a reasonable war film that makes the most out of a tiny budget and more or less one set. Though don't ask why the "Japanese" commander is played by an Austrian man called Mr German.