According to Randy Roberts and James S. Olson's excellent book on the Duke's life and career, John Wayne: American, the film was made chiefly to capitalize on the retaking of the Philippines and General Douglas MacArthur's famous return there on October 20, 1944. Back to Bataan was written in great haste while the film was being made -- and it shows. This would account for its notable lack of focus and characterization of even minimal depth.

The picture is basically a 90-minute recap of the surrender and retaking of the Philippines, from the fall of Bataan to the country's liberation after several years of extreme hardship and cruelty under Japanese militarism. Wayne is Col. Madden, ordered out of Bataan shortly before its capture, to lead a group of mostly Filipino guerillas. Eventually, Madden's group saves Capt. Andreas Bonifacio (Anthony Quinn) from the Bataan Death March. Andreas, the grandson of a legendary Filipino freedom fighter, is despondent after girlfriend Dolici (Fely Franquelli, dressed throughout the film like Cher at the Oscars) appears to go over to the other side to become a Tokyo Rose-type radio announcer.

The picture is little more than a long series of skirmishes with Wayne & Co. fighting a few dozen Japanese, stealing their guns and then high-tailing it back into the brush. In between these mostly humdrum action set pieces, the picture is thick with heavy-handed propaganda of a sort that make flag-waving speeches by the current administration seem restrained by comparison. Or maybe not.

No shading here. Everything in Back to Bataan is black and white with nothing in between. The Filipinos are uniformly angelic and noble, their Asianess tempered by Spanish-imported Christianity and American popular culture. At one point little Filipino children are shown crying out their love for all things American: "Hot Dogs!" they squeal. "Soda pop!" "Baseball!"

The Japanese by contrast are sadistic subhuman types who gleefully torture children. When a school principal (Vladimir Sokoloff) refuses to lower an American flag and replace it with a Japanese one, he's hung right there at the flagpole, his corpse tangled in Old Glory in a deathly embrace.

Incredibly enough, the film was written and directed by communists, screenwriter Ben Barzman and helmer Edward Dmytryk. Just four years later the pair would make Christ in Concrete, a film of enormous power, subtlety and richness, but Back to Bataan is the work of Hollywood hacks, not artists.

Beyond Wayne's stock hero, his longtime friend and colleague Paul Fix has a substantial role as the company's hobo-turned-soldier/comedy relief everyman. Beulah Bondi has a nice part as a tough if matronly schoolteacher, and cult tough guy Lawrence Tierney shows up near the end as a chain-smoking Navy liaison. Michael Mark, a ubiquitous presence in Universal's monster movies, turns up here as a chief of police.

Video & Audio

Part of the still relatively small handful of RKO titles Warner Home Video has let squeak out of its library, Back to Bataan is a near-flawless presentation, with much of the film looking brand new. Blacks are deeply black, and the picture's many nighttime scenes and endless jungle foliage come through just fine. The black and white film is only 95 minutes long and there are no Extra Features at all, so the bit rate isn't nor should it be an issue. At the 51:00 mark a pesky hair appears near the top of the frame for several seconds, but that seems inherent in the original negative. The mono soundtrack is clean, too. The climax uses extensive stock music from King Kong, which sounds much better here than it ever has in the 1933 film, even if its use in Back to Bataan is hardly appropriate.

Parting Thoughts

Back to Bataan is uninspired war action-melodrama, heavy on the patriotism but short on story and characterization. Even fans of John Wayne will be disappointed by his generic role and the picture's uninvolving, instantly forgettable script.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.