Back to Bataan (1945)

Director:

Edward Dmytryk

Writers:

Ben Barzman (screenplay) and
Richard H. Landau (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

31 May 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | War

Plot:

The US Army's defense of its Philippines colony and the allied Malay countries/colonies behind it counted...

Plot Keywords:

Guerrilla | Philippines | Japan | Captain | Independence

Cast

John Wayne	...	Col. Joseph Madden
Anthony Quinn	...	Capt. Andrés Bonifácio
Beulah Bondi	...	Bertha Barnes
Fely Franquelli	...	Dalisay Delgado
Richard Loo	...	Maj. Hasko
Philip Ahn	...	Col. Coroki
Alex Havier	...	Sgt. Bernessa (as J. Alex Havier)
'Ducky' Louie	...	Maximo Cuenca
Lawrence Tierney	...	Lt. Cmdr. Waite
Leonard Strong	...	Gen. Homma
Paul Fix	...	Bindle Jackson
Abner Biberman	...	Japanese Captain
Vladimir Sokoloff	...	Señor Buenaventura J. Bello

Also Known As:

The Invisible Army

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | USA:Approved (certificate #10576) | UK:PG | Finland:(Banned) (uncut) (1954) | Finland:K-16 (heavily cut) (1954) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Philippines

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

As the script for the movie was being written, the battle for Bataan was still being fought. The screenwriters were constantly updating the script based on the latest news from the front.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Plugs can be seen in the barrels of the Thompson sub-machine guns which make them fire fully automatically with blank rounds.

Quotes:

Maximo Cuenca: [a poor student dying in his teacher's arms after heroic action] Miss Barnes, I'm sorry I never learned how to spell "liberty".
[dies]
Bertha Barnes: [tearfully] No one ever learned it so well.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The John Wayne Anthology (1991) (TV)

Get those Japs!

Realistic based movie which effecively encapsulates the brutality of the Japanese during that time in the Philippines.The Philippines had basic commonality with the U.S. in basic philosophies like CHRISTIANITY(Theology) and DEMOCRACY(Politics) and this was the reason why the Japanese miss-calculated when they thought they could win the Filipinos over to their side with the propaganda they spewed forth regarding the Japanese/Filipino Asian bond.It was a very big mess and the Japanese just could not figure it out.The Filipinos just despised all the Japanese stood for no matter how noble their cause was supposed to be.This movie delivers and is ahead of it's time with gritty battle scenes and not over doing the Hollywood compromise bit.The main flaw here was the casting of Quinn as a Filipino.I am sure even at that time there were a lot of able Filipino studs who could hadle the role of Andres Bonifacio's grandson.A movie like this which emphasizes Filipino freedom and equality should have at least casted Filipino's on equal terms.Quinn did a very good job of it though,amazingly capturing the mannerisms of a typical modern Spanish Filipino well enough to pull it off.....