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Bataan (1943) is one of those movies that sticks in my brain like a popcorn kernel. Some movie endings simply nail the landing.
For example, one night I came home, flipped on the TV and saw Charlton Heston fall down on his knees before a nuked Statue of Liberty. I had no idea what movie it was, but the imagery hooked me.
A quick check of TV Guide showed me what movie I missed. Rest assured, I did not miss Planet of the Apes when it came on again.
Another night I came home to see Chuck Norris throw a guy down a well, only for the camera to pan down to the bottom of the well where the bad guy popped up in a freezeframe. I later found out that little film was titled Silent Rage.
What Are You? I’m Bataan!
Bataan is a World War II film made when World War II still raged. Its plot concerns 13 American troops left behind in the Philippines to delay Japanese forces for as long as possible. That is all the plot one needs on which to hang Tommy Guns, steamy jungles, grenade hurling, malaria, bayonetting, explosions, jazz music, gum chewing and more.
Considering Bataan cost $958,000 (the cocaine budget on an average movie today), they got a lot of bang for their buck. Bataan brought in $3,117,000 at the box office (the cocaine budget on Jaws III), which qualified it as a hit at the time.
Am I overselling Bataan? To a degree, yes, that is unavoidable.
An action movie made in 1943 has a hard time competing with the resources, refined techniques, choreography and editing of today’s action films. Plus, Bataan has to leave things like air attacks to the imagination, and its camera set ups are as plain jane as it gets.
Bataan also has a problem with geography. Since it was filmed in a studio, it basically has a bridge, an airfield, a base, a graveyard and a battlefield in a space that seems roughly the size of a high school gymnasium.
Finally, I reckon Bataan is a bit slow to the modern eye. There is a sizeable amount of dead time in its 114-minute runtime, but that’s life in the 1940s.
Pass The Bataan
Robert Taylor is the star of Bataan. He plays a comic book sergeant come to life, complete with a cigarette clamped in his stubbled, elemental jaw.
Like seemingly everyone in old Hollywood, Taylor smoked like a chimney and died at the relatively young age of 57. He may have been a seer in the short time he was around, though. He once said…
“It seems to me that at meetings, especially meetings of the general membership of the Guild, there was always a certain group of actors and actresses whose every action would indicate to me that, if they are not communists, they are working awfully hard to be communists.”
Welcome to tomorrow, Robert Taylor…
The Rest Of The Guys
George Murphy: Murphy’s character is an airman who is stuck with the group because his plane is broken down. He is apparently cool enough to wear a leather jacket through the whole movie, even though he is in a sweltering jungle. Fun fact: Murphy was the first actor to be elected to statewide office, paving the way for guys like Reagan and Schwarzenegger.
Thomas Mitchell: Mitchell’s character is the wise, old soldier of the group. His other character trait is a bunion. Mitchell was in big films like Gone With The Wind, High Noon and It’s A Wonderful Life. He also won an Academy Award for his role in Stagecoach.
Lloyd Nolan: Nolan plays a mysterious, lackadaisical, sarcastic character, and he does it to a tee. Nolan had a busy career topped with a nice little three-picture run toward its end: Ice Station Zebra, which Howard Hughes watched obsessively (I didn’t think it was that great), Earthquake and Airport. His last movie was Hannah And Her Sisters.
Lee Bowman: Bowman is the inexperienced leader of the group who defers to Taylor’s sergeant. Bowman also played Lucille Ball’s husband in the pilot for what would spawn the TV show I Love Lucy. This is a fun factoid because…
Dezi Arnez, Lucy’s real-life husband and star of I Love Lucy, is also in Bataan! He plays a Cuban tanker who has a radio that can be tuned to songs by musicians that really “send” him, man.
Still More Guys
Barry Nelson: Nelson plays an engineer who is good at blowing things up. Fun fact: Nelson was the first person to play James Bond in the 1954 CBS adaption of Casino Royale, but we are all probably more familiar with him as Mr. Ullman in The Shining.
Philip Terry: Terry plays the group’s medic. Terry was also in The Lost Weekend, and he was also in The Leechwoman, for real — he was married to Joan Crawford. Ba-dump psss!
Kenneth Spencer: Spencer plays another engineer with a lovely bass singing voice. Since Spencer was black, his role in Bataan prevented it from being shown in the south at the time it was released. Spencer did not have a big film career. He died in a commercial plane crash in 1964.
Tom Dugan: Dugan plays the group’s cook, who can whip up some tasty mule. Dugan appeared in more than 260 movies between 1927 and 1955. Looking at the list, I recognize Pennies From Heaven and not a lot else. Man, a lot of movies have been made that we don’t even know exist…
Alex Havier & Roque Espiritu: Havier and Espiritu were both Philippine guys who play native soldiers fighting alongside the GIs. Havier went on to be in an assortment of other war movies, but it looks like Espiritu did not catch on in the movie business.
The Heart Of The Group
Who is the emotional lynchpin of Bataan? That would be Robert Walker.
Most movie fans are familiar with Walker as the psycho in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train. In Bataan Walker plays a Navy musician who is equal parts eager and naïve while being a jack-of-all-trades.
Walker looks like a gangly thirty-year-old kid in Bataan. It was one of his first roles. His sailor suit makes him stand out from the rest of the grunts. In this way, his character probably serves as the audience surrogate. Watching Walker act with the rest of the cast, it is easy to see that he was on a different level when it came to generating pathos. It goes to show that some actors/actresses have a certain something that sets them apart from the regular gallery, like Carrot Top…
Director’s Bataan
William Taylor Garnett directed Bataan. Garnett had a career as both a writer and director in Hollywood. Two of the bigger movies he did was The Postman Always Rings Twice, which was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. Garnett also directed Laurel and Hardy shorts. I’d consider him pretty awesome just for that.
In some ways, Bataan is similar in structure to John Carpenter’s The Thing. You got a group of men in an isolated location, and they get picked off one by one. In this case the monster is the Japanese soldiers rather than a beastie from outer space.
The Japanese in Bataan are depicted in maximum jingoistic fashion as faceless cannon fodder. Despite this, I was able to enjoy the movie and come away with no racist feelings whatsoever toward Japanese. In fact, I can admit that they are my superiors in many ways.
Except when it comes to reaching things off high shelves, of course…
The look of Bataan is fairly atmospheric despite being shot in a studio. The jungle is layered and misty. The scenery almost has a grungy black-and-white Gilligan’s Island feeling to it, which is a bit surreal, like the whole movie is a fever dream of Sergeant Rock.
Nananananana…Bataan!
Once the setup is complete, the structure of Bataan is built around the steadily dwindling number of GIs as they succumb to sniper attacks, sneak attacks and more.
Each time a character dies, they are buried in a shallow grave marked with a cross and their helmet.
I’m not going to go into specific plot points, but I am going to spoil the ending because it is an old movie, we’ve all seen movies with this structure before and it is fairly clear where it is headed since I mentioned Bataan is similar to The Thing.
Plus, the ending of Bataan is what brought us here.
You know how the group dug a grave for everyone who dies throughout the movie?
At the end of Bataan, the last guy left digs his own grave and uses it as a foxhole as the final attack comes in. He even makes his own cross and scrawls his own name on it. He blasts away at the camera with a Browning machine gun while shouting…
“Come on, suckers! What’s the matter with you? What are you waiting for? Didn’t think we were here, did you? You dirty rotten rats! We’re still here! We’ll always be here! Why don’t you come and get it?”
Legacy
Perhaps Bill Paxton channeled this scene during his demise in Aliens? Or maybe James Cameron had it in mind when he wrote that sequence? It’s possible. Bataan does have some status in film history.
Bataan was included among the American Film Institute’s 2001 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies. The film was also included among the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies. Bataan’s average rating on IMDB is 7/10.
Check out the Bataan trailer:
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