| The Bamboo Prison | |
| Director: | Lewis Seiler |
| Producer: | Bryan Foy |
| Cinematography: | Burnett Guffey |
| Editing: | Henry Batista |
| Color Process: | Black and white |
| Studio: | Columbia Pictures |
| Distributor: | Columbia Pictures |
| Runtime: | 79 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
The Bamboo Prison is a 1954 American Korean War–drama film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring Robert Francis, Brian Keith, Dianne Foster, and Jerome Courtland. The working title was I Was a Prisoner in Korea. The US Army denied their co-operation to the producers.[1]
Due to Cold War hysteria, the film was falsely accused of communist sympathies, with several US cities banning it, although the film is clear that Sgt. Rand was actually a spy for the US, pretending to be a sympathizer.[2]
The brainwashing and torture of American POWs during the Korean War were also dramatized in P.O.W. (1953), Prisoner of War (1954, starring Ronald Reagan), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962, starring Frank Sinatra).
A group of American soldiers are POWs in North Korea in the final phase of the Korean War. POWs who show sympathy with the communist cause are given special privileges, but are understandably hated by the other prisoners, who see them as traitors.
The camp "brain-washer", Comrade Clayton, is permitted to have his beautiful Russian wife, Tanya, live in camp. Sergeant Rand, one of the communist sympathizers (known as Progressives), falls in love with her, and his special privileges permit him to go to her house. However, she is not a communist sympathizer. Meanwhile. the camp priest, Father Dolan, is actually an impostor, trying to glean information through confession. Despite their differences, Rand helps his rival, Corporal Brady, to escape.
At war's end, Sgt. Rand poses as a man disillusioned with the capitalist system and its exploitation of the working man in order to remain in North Korea as an American intelligence agent.