King Rat (1965) on Netflix
Singapore surrenders in 1942 and Allied prisoners are held at Changi camp. Corporal King thrives there on black market dealings, and recruits Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe as his translator.
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Trailer
Plot summary
After the fall of Singapore in 1942, Allied prisoners of war are held by the Japanese in Changi camp, where food, medicine and comforts are scarce. Corporal King, one of the few Americans among the British and Australian inmates, gets by through trading and black market deals, keeping himself healthier and better supplied than the men around him. Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe, an upper-class British officer, tries to hold on to his standards while sickness and hunger wear him down. King asks Marlowe to work as his translator, and the two become acquainted. Provost Lieutenant Grey, who despises King, works to bring him down.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about King Rat (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bryan Forbes wanted to shoot King Rat's exteriors in Singapore and its interiors at a British studio, but Columbia's new head of production Mike Frankovich, keen to show he opposed "runaway productions", insisted the whole film be shot in Southern California, where a ranch at Thousand Oaks was turned into the prison camp.
- Columbia wanted a variety of middle-aged Americans in the cast, so Bryan Forbes and James Woolf agreed to employ every resident British actor in Hollywood on the SAG list in return for importing a quota of actors from England, who were picked for their slimness and kept on strict diets until their roles were done.
- Columbia's suggestions for the title role of King included Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, James Garner and Burt Lancaster, but Bryan Forbes felt they would have "made nonsense for Clavell's novel" and insisted on casting George Segal.
- Carl Foreman was originally attached to produce King Rat with a cast including Peter O'Toole, Trevor Howard, John Mills and Albert Finney, but he left the project in late 1963, saying he had nothing more to say about war after making four consecutive films on the subject.
- Condensing James Clavell's 400-page novel into a screenplay meant Bryan Forbes stripped away portions he did not wholeheartedly admire, mostly the introduction of native girls, and posed the question of how men survived under such conditions.
- King Rat previewed poorly, which led Bryan Forbes to delete some scenes and tone down the film's anti-religious passages.
- Bryan Forbes said King Rat later became a cult film on university campuses, though in 1965, with Vietnam still a "clean war", American mass audiences were unlikely to take kindly to such a cynical view of human behavior.
