This movie seems to be a well-intentioned tribute to the American P.O.W.s held for years under brutal conditions in North Vietnam. However, the characters are flat, the attitudes simplistic, the ambiance never quite persuasive. Episodes and characters come and go without much impact. One of the movie's "highlights" consists of a montage-sequence in which a captured U.S. pilot played by David Anthony Smith is subjected to various kinds of torture. Accounts written by former POWs indicate that they suffered "rope" tortures and floggings delivered with whips made of strips of rubber taken from automobile tires. However, Smith's torture shows him being shocked with electrical wires alligator-clipped to his nipples. One of the prison guards then gleefully turns the crank on an electrical generator and Smith begins to writhe in torment -- a sight which prompts laughter from his delighted tormentors. Then the clips are transferred to Smith's genitals, though the camera angle discreetly avoids nudity. The guard again turns the crank and he and his colleagues break into unabashed laughter once more as Smith, his sexual organs now being "fried," dances in helpless agony. Dramatic, yes, but questionable. In his massively-detailed 1976 book, "P.O.W. - A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, 1964-1973," author John G. Hubbell makes absolutely no mention of electricity being used in either nipple or genital torture. One gets the impression these tortures were included in "The Hanoi Hilton" simply because they fitted our notions of how fiendishly sadistic the Oriental mind can be.
Review of The Hanoi Hilton
