Val Guest was one of the most prominent directors to work for Hammer Films, only surpassed by Terence Fisher, although his visionary and most outstanding work, «The Day the Earth Caught Fire», was made outside that production company.
It was Guest who, with his international hit «The Quatermass Xperiment» (1955), pointed Hammer on the profitable path of "cinéma fantastique". However, apart from this film and its sequel «Quatermass 2», Guest did not return to horror, not even when he made «The Abominable Snowman», a good drama that he kept on a more philosophical and mystical plane, away from frights.
Before finding a more viable breakthrough to mainstream cinema with «Expresso Bongo» (1959), produced by his own company, Guest made for Hammer psychological dramas, thrillers and the the war diptych consisting of «The Camp on Blood Island» (1958) and «Yesterday's Enemy» (1959), a kind of war claim made to Japan through cinema.
The first was a box office success that consolidated the distribution of Hammer products through the American company Columbia Pictures; which addressed, 13 years after the end of World War II, the mistreatment received by British prisoners of war in a Japanese prison, located in the fictional Blood Island, part of the former British colony in Malaysia. By then Columbia was preparing the release of a movie with a similar theme, «The Bridge on the River Kwai» by David Lean, which garnered attention and awards, but this did not prevent the Hammer production from being a hit, despite devastating criticism. The movie was bolstered by the best-selling novelization of the script by John Manchip White and Guest.
For «Yesterday's Enemy», the production hired Korean-American actor Philip Ahn for the role of the Japanese officer; and sent the casting people to Chinese restaurants, where they managed to recruit waiters who didn't even speak English. Released the following year, it was not a resounding success like its predecessor, but today it is considered the more powerful war drama. Actor Stanley Baker would say it was one of the best films of his career, alongside classics he starred in, such as Cy Endfield's «Zulu» and Joseph Losey's «Accident.»
Based on a television script released a year earlier, «Yesterday's Enemy» tells the story of a platoon crossing the jungle in Burma, in an attempt to escape from Japanese troops. Baker is the officer who stops at nothing to achieve the goal of bringing alive the military under his command to headquarters: obstacles are the order of the day.
Peter R. Newman's script has a theatrical structure and was, in fact, later turned into a three-act play. Some dialogue scenes are long and, nevertheless, effective, thanks to the fact that they are directly inspired by what Newman saw, heard and lived in Burma as a soldier, and for being Guest's right hand when directing the "mise-en-caméra".
These two small, low-budget and effective films, in addition to the remarkable films that I knew and mentioned at the beginning of these notes, have increased the esteem that I already had for Val Guest's work.
It was Guest who, with his international hit «The Quatermass Xperiment» (1955), pointed Hammer on the profitable path of "cinéma fantastique". However, apart from this film and its sequel «Quatermass 2», Guest did not return to horror, not even when he made «The Abominable Snowman», a good drama that he kept on a more philosophical and mystical plane, away from frights.
Before finding a more viable breakthrough to mainstream cinema with «Expresso Bongo» (1959), produced by his own company, Guest made for Hammer psychological dramas, thrillers and the the war diptych consisting of «The Camp on Blood Island» (1958) and «Yesterday's Enemy» (1959), a kind of war claim made to Japan through cinema.
The first was a box office success that consolidated the distribution of Hammer products through the American company Columbia Pictures; which addressed, 13 years after the end of World War II, the mistreatment received by British prisoners of war in a Japanese prison, located in the fictional Blood Island, part of the former British colony in Malaysia. By then Columbia was preparing the release of a movie with a similar theme, «The Bridge on the River Kwai» by David Lean, which garnered attention and awards, but this did not prevent the Hammer production from being a hit, despite devastating criticism. The movie was bolstered by the best-selling novelization of the script by John Manchip White and Guest.
For «Yesterday's Enemy», the production hired Korean-American actor Philip Ahn for the role of the Japanese officer; and sent the casting people to Chinese restaurants, where they managed to recruit waiters who didn't even speak English. Released the following year, it was not a resounding success like its predecessor, but today it is considered the more powerful war drama. Actor Stanley Baker would say it was one of the best films of his career, alongside classics he starred in, such as Cy Endfield's «Zulu» and Joseph Losey's «Accident.»
Based on a television script released a year earlier, «Yesterday's Enemy» tells the story of a platoon crossing the jungle in Burma, in an attempt to escape from Japanese troops. Baker is the officer who stops at nothing to achieve the goal of bringing alive the military under his command to headquarters: obstacles are the order of the day.
Peter R. Newman's script has a theatrical structure and was, in fact, later turned into a three-act play. Some dialogue scenes are long and, nevertheless, effective, thanks to the fact that they are directly inspired by what Newman saw, heard and lived in Burma as a soldier, and for being Guest's right hand when directing the "mise-en-caméra".
These two small, low-budget and effective films, in addition to the remarkable films that I knew and mentioned at the beginning of these notes, have increased the esteem that I already had for Val Guest's work.