Back Door to Hell

Back Door to Hell
Directed by Monte Hellman
Produced by Fred Roos
Screenplay by John Hackett
Richard A. Guttman
Starring Jimmie Rodgers
John Hackett
Jack Nicholson
Music by Mike Velarde
Cinematography Mars Rasca
Edited by Fely Crisostomo
Production
company
Lippert Pictures
Medallion Films
Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox
Release dates
  • November 15, 1964
Running time
 75 min.
Country United States
Language English

Back Door to Hell is a 1964 film concerning a three-man team of United States soldiers preparing the way for Gen. MacArthur's World War II return to the Philippines by destroying a Japanese communications center. It was produced on a relatively small budget and received lukewarm reviews, and is most notable as one of Jack Nicholson's earlier roles. Hellman, Nicholson and Hackett also made the film back to back with Flight to Fury (1964).

Cast

Production

Robert Lippert had been impressed by Jack Nicholson's Thunder Island so gave Nicholson and his friends Monty Hellman and John Hackett $160,000 and $400 a week salary to make two films on location in the Philippines. The three men and Hellman's wife and child travelled 28 days by ship via Hawaii, Hong Kong and Japan with the three working on the screenplays to both films on the voyage. Back Door to Hell was a rewrite on one of Lippert's existing screenplays.[1] Popular singer Jimmie Rodgers had a substantial part in the film, and co-financed it.

The film, directed by Monte Hellman, was shot on location in the Philippines, giving it a particularly authentic look. The same plot was reused in Ib Melchior's Ambush Bay (1966) with a larger Marine patrol destroying a minefield prior to the American and Filipino invasion of the Philippines.

Notes

  1. ↑ p.55 McDougal, Dennis Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times John Wiley and Sons, 2008

External links