One of only four Hammer war films, the film takes place in Burma during World War II and it does not pull any punches. In contrast to many films of the period, it depicts war as a dirty, grimy, immoral affair. Like the "Quatermass" films, "The Abominable Snowman" and "Cash on Demand", it was an adaptation of a BBC TV drama, namely a 1958 TV film of the same name which I presume is now lost. According to "The Hammer Vault", the script of the TV version was based on an actual war crime committed by a British officer in Burma.Stanley Baker is brilliant as Captain Alan Langford, a callous, cruel, unprincipled bastard who orders the murder of two innocent Burmese civilians to convince a Japanese informer that he is serious. He is a very intelligent but that just makes him more dangerous. He completely dismisses any argument that he has done something wrong, claiming that it was necessary for the greater good. Yeah, I seem to have heard something like that before. He also orders that the wounded be left behind so that they will not slow them down. The fact that they elect to stay behind before he can tell them of his decision does not make it any less cold blooded. He does what he does so that his men will survive but that doesn't make it right as he crossed a line which soldiers are not meant to cross. If it had been another time and place, he would have been charged with war crimes but of course the victors in war are never charged with war crimes.Guy Rolfe and Leo McKern are excellent in their respective roles as the Padre and the war correspondent Max, the most vocal opponents of Langford's actions with whom the audience are supposed to sympathise. Max compares Langford's behaviour to the killing of Jews in Germany and the Padre unsuccessfully tries to convince him that there is a difference between killing enemy combatants out of necessity and killing innocent non-combatants. While he does not appear until more than an hour into the film, perhaps the strongest cast member in the film other than Baker is the great Korean-American actor Philip Ahn as Major Yamazuki, Langford's Japanese counterpart. Unlike the more rough and ready Langford, Yamazuki tries to present himself as a gentleman as he appears to be a very cultured man who is unfailingly polite, even saying "please" to his captives when he gives them instructions. However, this is just a veneer. Scrape it away and he is just as cold blooded as Langford, as he demonstrates by his actions. There are two sides of the same coin.The rest of the cast is very strong as well such as Gordon Jackson, Richard Pasco, Wolfe Morris, David Lodge, Percy Herbert and, in a very early role, Burt Kwouk. Jackson and Kwouk reprised their roles from the TV version, incidentally. One thing that I liked about the film was that, with the exception of Morris as the informer, all of the Burmese and Japanese characters were played by actors of East or Southeast Asian descent. This adds to the realism of the film, as does the fact that the Japanese and Burmese characters speak their own languages among themselves. The writing by Peter R. Newman is extremely strong and Val Guest's direction is top notch. The film was shot entirely in a studio and this can be seen from the fairly unconvincing backdrops but the jungle, village and forest sets are very convincing.Overall, this is an excellent and powerful anti-war film. While war may give rise to acts of heroism, it is most certainly not an heroic business and the film does not hesitate to point this out, albeit in a comparatively subtle manner.

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 . It also has the distinction of being written by Peter R Newman who wrote the 1964 DOCTOR WHO story The Sensorites who also wrote YESTERDAY'S ENEMY originally as a television play for the BBC . This film , the teleplay and his contribution for DOCTOR WHO are his only writing credits . He gave up his career as a writer and worked as a hotel porter till his death in an accident in 1975 This is a slightly different take on the war is hell theme . Baker plays Captain Langford who is leading a patrol of men cut off behind Japanese lines in the Burmese jungle . What becomes very clear long before the halfway point in the movie is that things aren't going to work out nicely for Langford's section . This is a bit more than simple heroic brave white soldiers overcoming the Japs and surviving towards a happy ending What sets it apart from its peers in the 1950s war genre is how it blurs the lines between good and bad . Of course since 1959 when this film was released we have seen a glut of films such as APOCALYPSE NOW and PLATOON where the morality of carrying out certain acts in war are heavily questioned as being for the greater good but this would be a relatively new concept in the war genre . What's the difference between native villagers being shot by the British or the Japanese ? Is there one ? What's the difference between killing civilians being shot by soldiers on the ground or by pilots up the sky ? Is there one ? It's left to the audience to answer these questions in their own minds Where the film falls down slightly is when Langford and his surviving men become prisoners of the Japanese . It's a little bit too convenient and obvious that the events seen in the latter half of the film perfectly mirror those seen in the earlier half and where the tables are now turned 360 degrees , not enough to ruin the film but the first half where Langford has to take practical steps which may or may not be war crimes in that era is probably better than the second half . As Baker pointed out at the time the lack of budget where it's obvious that it's filmed on a sound stage also gives the movie a slightly cheap feel One last point while watching this film in 2013 that needs pointing out is the background of the Second World War . What would be viewed as murder or breaking the rules of war today were somewhat more flexible back then . Rightly if Langford committed some of the acts in a village in Afghanistan today he would face a charge of murder but probably not so back in 1942 in a Burmese village . That said the whole point of the film wants to put the audience in the combat boots of Langford and this is does admirably

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.Also that year Guest directed for Hammer The Camp On Blood Island.In 1960 the film of the successful play The Long and The Short And The Tall was released.I recall that there was a storm of protest from veterans of the Burma campaign,as they claimed that civilians were not killed and mistreated.Baker gives a powerful performance as an officer under pressure.He was on his way up to stardom.The same year he would star in another Guest film,Hell Is a City,this time starring as an unconventional detective. One does have the suspicion that this film was made rather on the coattails of Kwai and The Long and the Short and The Tall.Elements from the plot of that film are in this film.Furthermore in both films the platoon ends up being killed by the Japanese.Although now released on video this film is pretty much unknown.Despite a clearly limited budget this film is effective at evoking the jungle and the tough decisions that Baker has to make and not least the ironical situation he finds himself in.

I firmly believe that, if Val Guest had been born in the United States, his films would be better known and more widely celebrated than they currently are. His maverick career path and idiosyncratic style align him with American counterparts, like Nick Ray and Sam Fuller, who become darlings of the auteur-driven critics of the 1960s and 70s. (As it was, American critics typically did not take the British film industry very seriously, except for Hitchcock, Lean, and other directors who "went international," until American film directors like Martin Scorsese brought folks like Michael Powell to the critics' attention.) In particular, Guest's career path (journalist to writer to director), occasionally brutal stories, and downright weird directorial choices remind me a great deal of Fuller. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Guest screened "Steel Helmet" before shooting "Yesterday's Enemy," for instance. Today, Guest is probably best known among aficionados of Hammer Studios, where Guest worked regularly from the mid-1950s until the early-1970s, or among lovers of such campy movies as "Casino Royale" and "Expresso Bongo.""Yesterday's Enemy" was made for Hammer and came in the middle of what I think was Guest's best years, 1955-63. Virtually every film he made during that period is excellent, and "Yesterday's Enemy" is one of the best. As other reviewers have pointed out, it's a tough World War II film set in Burma and (in a daring move for the time) without any musical soundtrack. Fans of British cinema are in for a treat because of a cast of familiar faces: Stanley Baker, Leo McKern, Guy Rolfe, etc. Baker is especially good as the single-minded officer who's willing to sacrifice ANYBODY'S life to achieve his objectives, but it's Guest's film all the way. Although most of the film was clearly shot inside a studio, Guest uses this to his advantage to capture the claustrophobia and disorientation of jungle fighting. There are also some wonderful long tracking-shots during the action sequences that are extremely impressive in wide-screen.One of the other reviewers has suggested that this film illustrates the brutality of the Japanese and justifies the use of the atomic bomb on them. I'm not going to comment on the vaguely racist implications of his review, but (s)he clearly misunderstood the movie. In fact, Guest takes pains to demonstrate just how much Baker and his Japanese counterpart have in common; their decisions mirror each other, and the Burmese woman explicitly equates the British and Japanese. In other words, "Yesterday's Enemy" is ultimately an anti-war film, not an anti-Japanese diatribe. Everyone is brutalized by war.The only negative thing I can say about this movie is the one gripe that I always have with Guest's dramatic films: the intensity of the interpersonal conflicts among his various characters. In a lot of his films, every single character seems to be going through his/her own existential crisis at the same time and lets off steam by verbally attacking everyone in sight, and this sometimes comes across as melodramatic. In "Yesterday's Enemy," for instance, it's hard to believe that this army unit is still capable of functioning if the officers are constantly at each other's throats. But this was clearly Guest's decision, so it's a minor quibble.