The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"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

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.

A taste of hell, indeed! If hell is half as bad as this movie was, then I pray for any poor soul heading for Dante's Inferno!In a nutshell, the script was non-existent, the plot, well there was actually no plot, and the fighting, well, you could tell this was a pathetic "B" Movie. There was no character development, even the slashing of a knife looked fake. The only reason I didn't turn this movie off after the first three minutes was in respect for the $ 1.07 I shelled out for this flop! The costumes looked, surprise surprise, like the seventies and not like WWII 1942. The movie lacked any dénouement though I will give it the credit of having a climax. All in all, as I said in my title, this would truly be a knee slapper on Mystery Science Theatre 3000!