One of the Japanese soldiers is armed with a German MP38/40 machine pistol.
Only the Bulgarians and the Germans used the MP38/40.
There are six prisoners in front of a firing squad, but only five soldiers in the firing squad each fire one shot.
I caught this for the first time this evening having never come across it before in over 60 years of film and a TV viewing. It proves what can be achieved without a huge budget as long as one has a fine cast, well written script and a darn good director.
I've been a huge Stanley Baker/ Cy Endenfield fan since I saw him in Zulu & Sands of the Kalahri. This film really threw me off as old as it was.
Yesterday's Enemy was a BBC television play by Peter R Newman. It was inspired on a war crime perpetrated by a British army captain in Burma in 1942.
This film was made right in the middle of a period when cinematic interest in the Far East war was at its height.The big film of 1958 was The Bridge On The River Kwai.
On the surface this is just another war film set in the Far East involving the Occidental fighting the Oriental . The fact that it was produced by Hammer Films probably isn't a great omen either but before watching I came on to the trivia of this site to find to Stanley Baker regarded it as one of his best films .
"When You Go home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"There's a school of thought in film world that all war films are anti-war films, some, however, are the definition of such and are cream of the crop. Yesterday's Enemy is one such picture.
This is war at its very worst, and it's difficult to imagine any nastier situation. A small unit is surrounded by any number of Japanese in the Burmese jungle and search desperately for a way out.
This is a watchable British war film, where everyone is appropriately sweaty and greasy, but there are several details that make the film highly unrealistic. The Japanese commander is obviously Chinese.
This Hammer production broke away from the traditional horror movies for which they had become famous in the 1950's and like "The Camp on Blood Island" was a Second World War drama concentrating on the war with the Japanese. Set in the Burmese jungle, but filmed in the studio, it is a mostly all-male affair full of very familiar British faces.
