Back to Bataan (1945) on Netflix
Japan takes the Philippines in 1942. Colonel Joseph Madden stays behind to organize Filipino guerrillas, and turns to Captain Andrés Bonifácio, a Filipino officer held by the Japanese.
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- IMDb6.6/104,732 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
A 1945 raid by US Army Rangers frees prisoners at the Cabanatuan camp in the Philippines, and the story turns back to 1942, when American and Filipino troops under General MacArthur are losing Bataan to the Japanese. Colonel Joseph Madden is chosen to slip behind the lines and organize the guerrillas who will keep resisting the occupation. He joins a band of fighters and takes in Bertha Barnes, an American schoolteacher who brings her students along after the Japanese hang her school's principal for refusing to lower the American flag. On a first mission against a Japanese fuel dump the men come upon the Bataan Death March, and Madden works to bring Captain Andrés Bonifácio, grandson of a national hero, out of it and into the resistance, since the discouraged fighters need a leader to rally them.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Back to Bataan (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Barzman and director Edward Dmytryk were outspoken about their communist views, and when Wayne heard them belittling the religion of the film's technical advisor, Colonel George S. Clarke, and mocking him with renditions of the Internationale, he confronted Dmytryk and asked whether he was a communist.
- The film's writers collaborated on scenes they thought would force John Wayne to insist on a stunt double, among them one in which Wayne and Quinn had to stay underwater in an icy pond breathing through reeds. Wayne did the stunts, warning Barzman over a bracing whiskey beforehand.
- Filming took 130 days because of the rapidly changing Pacific war news. Two thirds of the way through, the invasion of the Philippines forced script rewrites, and the Raid at Cabanatuan was quickly written into the screenplay, with scenes recreating the 6th Ranger Battalion's attack.
- During the action sequences the soundtrack reuses large sections of Max Steiner's score for RKO's King Kong from 1933, and another part of the score works in an instrumental fragment of My Country, 'Tis of Thee.
- As the film opens, the credits roll over actual film clips shot on January 30, 1945, of prisoners of war being freed from Cabanatuan, a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
- The film closes with a second short montage, this one showing several of the actual released American prisoners from the Cabanatuan prison camp rather than the actors who played them.
