"A Taste of Hell" is a very slow, boring, and dull turkey of a film. An on-screen title tells us we are in "Phillipines 1942" (otherwise we wouldn't know, except for the fact that Vic Diaz is the main baddie and he has been in every Filipino movie ever made). John Garwood plays Lt. Barry Mann, a horribly disfigured freak who goes around chopping up Japanese soldiers and lives in a cave. He wears a large straw hat and shambles around pathetically. When a young boy, Pedro, befriends him and lets him share his cave, this must spur him on in some way and he goes after Major Kuramoto (Diaz), the evil Japanese...Major.Meanwhile, non-disfigured hero Jack Lowell (Smith) tries to save his former girlfriend, Maria, from the evil Japanese, who have imprisoned all the women they could find. Kuramoto put Maria in a tiger cage because he has special designs on her. Will Maria be saved? Will Lowell go behind enemy lines and save the day? Who is that freakish dude with the machete? Will you die of utter boredom? Who can tell? I have made this movie sound much, much better than it is. It is a total slog, it commits the biggest sin of movie-making: it is boring. Filmmakers have so many tools at their disposal to make sure their movie is NOT boring, there is truly no excuse. Sadly, "A Taste of Hell" is a jumble of nonsensical mush. In a bad way. There is too much unfocused talking and love-bits, not enough action or Major Kuramoto, the things that would have saved it. It is unclear who the characters are or what they want. Quickly, the audience does not care either.Additionally, it is insulting to the audience, because the last 5-7 minutes of the film has the action and violence you have been craving. You CANNOT make the audience wade through 80 minutes of NOTHING and then expect them to be happy with a few bullet hits and a guy falling out of a guard tower. That's a big no-no. There is a fan-favorite death, a decapitation, which is welcome, but it's too little too late.Interestingly, this was released by Harry Novak's Box office International Pictures. This sort of war-based tripe was different for Harry, who normally traffics in Sexploitation. For more on Harry, please visit somethingweird.com.While, in its (admittedly tired) mixture of war and some light horror elements, it is somewhat surprising it got a PG rating, you have to remember, some amazing things were rated PG back in the day. Just look at Blood and Lace (1971).It all ends with the on screen title "...and Satan smiled". It is as confusing as all that came before it. It really could have used that type of insanity earlier on. Sometimes confusing can be good - the obvious example is Night of the Kickfighters - but here it's not. Avoid "A Taste of Hell".For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

"A Taste of Hell" lacks flavor and is hell to watch. This thoroughly ordinary World War II melodrama takes place in the Philippines during 1942 after General Douglas MacArthur has left the country to the Japanese and their usual sadistic skulduggery. Mind you, the Japanese are portrayed as treacherous. The first scene sets the stage for a vendetta between the hero and the villain. Major Kuromoto (Victor Diaz of "Project: Kill")catches They catches U.S. Army Lieutenant Barry Mann (John Garwood of "Nam's Angels") and his guerrilla army of natives in the open and get the drop on them. Kuromoto wants Mann alive and vows to kill all his men if the American refuses to surrender. Mann demands the Kuromoto let his men live and he will surrender. Kuromoto promises Mann that his men will receive "the proper treatment" and then massacres them when they do surrender. Mann is wounded in the arm and crippled for life. An explosion hurls him into a river that carries him downstream. Kuromoto is convinced that Mann is dead.Unable to speak coherently, Mann wanders around in the jungle for the bulk of the movie's 90-minutes in civilian attire with a battered hat to conceal his hideous features. "A Taste of Hell" is not a conventional World War II adventure opus like "Ambush Bay," "The Walls of Hell," or "Once Before I Die." You don't see any military equipment like tanks, planes, battleships, or even jeeps and it doesn't contain a standard-issue briefing scene with a map and superior officer describing the mission as suicidal. Indeed, there are no scenes with a radio operator calling in a request for air support or a supply drop. Essentially, "A Taste of Hell" is a behind-enemy-lines actioneer with tame heroics.Later, savage Japanese soldiers raid a village, murder a patriotic resistance leader, and abduct ten of the most beautiful women. Maria (Lisa Lorena of "Black Belt Avengers") is one of the women taken. She was once Lieutenant Mann's girlfriend. Jack Lowell (William Smith of "Conan the Barbarian") shows up in civilian clothes with an Army issue .45 caliber automatic pistol and a grease gun to help coordinate a guerrilla attack against the Japanese. Kuramoto anticipates that the guerrillas will launch their attack at night, but they decide to catch the Japanese by surprise with a dawn attack. The heroes don't arrive in time, however, to prevent the Japanese from raping the women. We are shown soldiers manhandling the helpless, screaming native girls in a hut. Meanwhile, Mann infiltrates the Japanese camp and starts knocking off soldiers. He hacks off Kuramoto's head with a huge knife when he catches him trying to rape Maria. The decapitation scene is passable. In the end, nobody of prominence survives the action-packed attack. Jack shoots Mann as Mann is helping Maria escape, and Maria takes a bullet in the stomach. The Japanese gun down Lowell before the battle concludes and he dies without firing a shot. Nobody wins.Believe it or not, this low-budget, B-movie monstrosity was produced by notorious porno producer Harry H. Novak, better known for soft T&A features like "The Dirty Mind of Young Sally," "Midnight Plowboy," and "The Exotic Dreams of Casanova." No, freshman co-directors Basil Bradbury and Neil Yarema drum up neither suspense nor tension, and "A Taste of Hell" lacks any nudity but has a modest amount of blood & gore. Diaz chews the scenery like a Spaghetti western bandit. None of the characters change or show any depth. The film concludes with the phrase ". . . and Satan smiled." The firearms look authentic as do the Japanese uniforms, but there is nothing noteworthy about this pathetic potboiler. The sole virture of "A Taste of Hell" is that it appears to have been lensed entirely on location without any visual effects or obvious backdrops. William Smith looks glum throughout the action.

Stationed in the Phillippines in 1942, American GI John Garwood (who also served as the film's co-producer) barely survives an attack by Japanese soldiers led by a despicably arrogant, fascistic and hard-hearted major (a splendid, snarling, scenery-gulping Vic Diaz at his most deliciously vicious and reprehensible). Garwood, who's been reduced to a horribly scarred, wheezing, mute shambling disfigured wreck whose unsightly appearance freaks out all those who see him, teams up with equally noble nice guy fellow American army man William Smith and a small Filipino guerrilla outfit to fight a harrowing uphill battle against Diaz's superior forces in order to liberate a bunch of peasants from Diaz's prison camp and rescue pretty Filipino farm girl Liza Lorena from Diaz's foul clutches.It's hard to believe that the usually quite down and dirty schlock movie studio head Harry Novak's Box Office International Pictures released this hugely disappointing snorefest, for this so-dreary-it's-deadly-dull dud proves to be a sickeningly sappy and soft-centered affair which sorely lacks the necessary hard, gritty edge to make the cut as acceptable exploitation fare. The pedestrian direction, Neil Yarema's revoltingly mawkish, hackneyed script, Fredy Conde's grainy, static cinematography, a corny stock war movie score, the sluggish pacing, hardly any explicit bloodshed to speak of, the flatly staged action scenes, a truly vomit-inducing flashback-related romance between Garwood and Lorena, and numerous heavy-handed attempts at heart-tugging messages about love, loyalty, bravery and the horrors of war sink this sour cinematic lemon like a 100 pound lead weight. Neither William Smith's always captivating brooding machismo nor Vic Diaz's rip-snorting villainy manage to salvage this cheap, mushy, and boringly tame war flick clinker. Okay, there is some thrilling and reasonably graphic carnage during the last reel, highlighted by a blackly ironic bummer ending and topped off by a juicy decapitation, but the viewer has to endure many long, dry stretches of insufferable tedium and gooey sentiment to get to the good stuff.

Made during the Filipino exploitation film boom of the early 70s, this film tried to mix the war film with elements of the horror movie but comes up way short on anything horrific. This is basically a WWII action film but with a facially disfigured, insane and homicidal soldier on the loose killing everybody. He reminded me of Alex Winter's freak makeup in his film FREAKED. Ultraprolific Filipino character actor Vic Diaz gets his head chopped off before being riddled with bullets. It's amazing what you could see in PG-rated movies back in the 70s.