BLOOD ALLEY (1955)

Here on this blog, I try to some extent not to go for the "classics" or the films everyone else remembers. In the case of John Wayne, while I do find him fascinating to read about, in terms of how his films and career influenced the culture at large, I'm not necessarily going to cover The Searchers, Stagecoach, or even (tempting as it is) The Conqueror, but rather one of his lesser-known 50s Cinemascope efforts. And since I do know something about Chinese history of that time, I thought I'd take a crack at its subject matter.

John Wayne as Captain Tom Wilder

Lauren Bacall as Cathy Grainger

Mike Mazurki as Big Han

Paul Fix as Mr. Tso

Joy Kim as Susu

Henry Nakamura as "Tack"

Berry Kroeger as Old Feng

Based on the novel (and adapted to film) by future Whipping Boy author Sid Fleischman, Blood Alley stars Wayne as American Merchant Captain Tom Wilder, who, after his ship is seized by Chinese Communists, is "shanghaied" (IMDB's words, not mine) into transporting the villagers of Chiku San to Hong Kong (via riverboat and without even a real map) through "Blood Alley" (the Strait of Formosa). All the while, he finds himself attracted to tough physician's daughter Cathy, who herself fights her attraction to the rugged captain.

Wilder not-so-low-key insults a Red Army prison guard

while talking to him about "Baby".

Just from reading the synopsis, you can probably guess Blood Alley is one of several anti-Communist propaganda-themed films Wayne headlined of the era (1952's Big Jim McLain had this ill-advised poster and him in Hawaii tangling with future Alfred Alan Napier), and in some respects, it is exactly what one would expect, while in others, there's some effort (to this reviewer's surprise) to try and show a fairer portrayal of the Chinese people for the time.

San Francisco Bay's China Camp stands in for the fictional Chiku San village.

Filling in for a fired Robert Mitchum, Wayne very much gives a "John Wayne performance", with a few exceptions.

Wilder learns the fate of Cathy's father. Awwww...

Wayne's chemistry with Bacall isn't non-existent, but the structure of the story, coupled with Wayne's Captain Wilder having an imaginary girlfriend named "Baby", brings an odd element to your garden-variety "slap-slap-kiss" sexual tension (albeit not in such quick procession). Whether as a result or not, Wayne and Bacall don't quite gel enough to elevate the material.

See what I mean though?

Wayne and Bacall later reunited for 1976's The Shootist.

Fans of Bacall might be disappointed in her reduced role in the second half of the film, preferring her disposition in the first half, though that's also largely due to the story's focus on the ship's journey and the villagers. I certainly wished she kept more of it up for the rest of the film.

They replaced me in Cactus Flower with who?!

For every aspect I like about Blood Alley (or can at least appreciate), there's another that's either rushed, inaccurate, badly dated, or singed by the "Yellowface" element.

As ridden with "Engrish" as her dialogue is, Kim is great as Susu. One of the few villagers who stands up to Wilder (and him hilariously submitting to her in turn), she pretty much steals the show whenever she's on, getting a chance to sing to the ship passengers later in the film.

Wayne's transformation into Oskar Werner on Columbo

would sadly be short-lived.

Less embarrassingly written is Nakamura's "Tack", an amusingly "Americanized" villager who's an expert marine engineer with an affinity for cigars. Nakamura is so charming in the role, that it just makes the Caucasian actors playing the other villagers stand out even more jarringly.

While I appreciate that Blood Alley doesn't employ "Yellowface" makeup

(for the most part), Fix is so clearly raising his eyebrows to "make slants"

that you wonder how he hasn't gotten a headache yet.

"She's a combination Anita Ekberg and Tura Satana!"

Believe it or not, Ekberg won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer that year.

Blood Alley moves along quite well, thanks to Wellman's solid direction and William H. Clothier's great cinematography. Given the image quality, you would be forgiven for thinking this was from a soft DVD transfer, but it's actually due to the technological challenges of restoring films made with Cinemascope lenses (seen in this film's panning shots), 50s Eastmancolor film stock, and the short-lived WarnerColor process.

Some of Blood Alley's scenes employ so much soft-focus that

you'd swear you were watching an Emmanuelle film.

The amount of extras in this film, coupled with the use of real ships, was undoubtedly 

a massive undertaking that should be credited for its execution.

Blood Alley has an excellent, dialogue-free sequence where members

of the Feng family try and take control of the ship, scored only by thunderclaps

(and at one point, the sound of a goat).

The sequence also provides a nice moment of chemistry between Wayne and Bacall.

THE STUFF OF SYNTAX (AND BEYOND)

Because the village of Chiku San is fictional (though the real-life Blood Alley is actually in Shanghai), Blood Alley may get around some scrutiny regarding accuracy, and I shouldn't expect total accuracy in a 50s propaganda movie, but needless to say, this Chinese-Canadian had a field day making fun of the "little things" in this film.

While I commend the white actors for learning a sizable amount of Chinese (all unsubtitled), 

their thick accents clash with the Chinese-American actors speaking Mandarin.

(And Betty, I love you, but girl, you sound Cantonese.)

For those who don't know, because China is such a large, diverse country, its dialects are regarded as mutually unintelligible. You could make the argument that the Communist soldiers might understand more than one dialect, but hearing the different accents in this film is like watching a film set in historical London (back when French was the official language), and its actors from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Northern England not even attempting to do a London accent (but even worse).

W.T. Chang as Mr. Han and George Chan as Mr. Sing

No real explanation is given as to why Chiku San's people want to flee

to Hong Kong, other than disliking the government in Beijing. In real life,

the rural villagers would more likely be focused on rebuilding after

the events of both WWII and the Chinese Civil War.

Neighborhood Gossip

Old Feng, patriarch of a large, "Peiping-friendly" family, is no one's idea of a "dyed-in-the-silk" Communist. Just from material obsessions alone, he's closer to the Communists' idea of what a Nationalist looks like.

"Yellowface" aside, Kroeger is (darkly) hilarious as Feng, hitting 

his own relatives for not adequately caring for his engine-less car.

Interestingly, this "token bad Commie" is a fan of the 

American national pastime of using a Viewmaster.

Also, little explanation is offered as to why the Fengs are taken along on the ship (other than for plot inconvenience), so one could infer that any major conflict could have been avoided had the Fengs just run off to Beijing.

LOGO GEMS

Blood Alley uses the 1953 - 1956 three-dimensional variant of the 1948 - 1967 Warner Bros. Shield, usually reserved for 3-D and some 2-D films.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

An uncredited James Hong has a small speaking role as a Communist soldier.

Wayne bayoneting a lecherous soldier trying to assault Bacall is only 

slightly less funny than Wayne firing a too-small MAC-10 in McQ (1974).

Uh, yeah, no. I have zero issue with Bacall's scenes here.

Before Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas, there was "Tack" and his "magic cigar",

moving from his hand to his mouth between shots.

Chekhov's Throwing Knives

"Help! I'm being seajacked by a six-foot-tall monk

who keeps calling everyone "Pilgrim"!"

The other important Western Union telegram regarding

a disappearance in 1955.

Bacall reacts appropriately to the imaginary girlfriend who stole her real-life nickname.

After seeing all the real ships in the film, the finale's obvious models

will give the audience some real Theodore Tugboat flashbacks.

TIDBITS AND SUCH

Wayne promoted Blood Alley in the I Love Lucy episode "Lucy and John Wayne".

While Blood Alley has some gorgeously-colored posters, some of them also seemingly depict Bacall as either inexplicably black-haired or as Princess Leia. 

Blood Alley is an odd, "crossroads" depiction of how Hollywood saw the Asian community, nestled within your run-of-the-mill historical adventure movie, with a large dash of propaganda, and is best viewed as a historical artifact and a marker of the Cinemascope era.

Copyright © Chynna Moore

GANGSTER STORY (1959)

It's hard to craft a proper introduction for Gangster Story. In fact, I'm not sure if a proper summary or description could do it justice. But I'll try as best I can to show a little of why you should see it for yourselves.

Walter Matthau as Jack (not Jake) Martin

Carol Grace as Carol Logan

Bruce MacFarlane as Earl Dawson

Garry Walberg as Adolph

Gangster Story is the first and only film Walter Matthau ever directed himself, as he and newlywed wife Carol Grace were virtually broke at the time. Accepting the jobs of star and director for just $2500, Matthau later said that "It was a poor script by a hack writer and a famous cardiovascular surgeon who produced the film with his brother who was a textile manufacturer from Philadelphia." He also said that the film "premiered at Loew's in Newark, and was so bad it never crossed the Hudson."

Keep those descriptions in mind when watching this film.

Remember that curtain pattern. You'll see it again later.

Gangster Story is the "true story" (yeah, no) of notorious bank robber Jack Martin. Already wanted for the murder of two cops, he first plans a bank job upon his arrival in late-50s Orange County. 

Matthau's legendary acting teacher Raikin Ben-Ari as a plumber. 

Despite having only one scene, he's easily 

the most memorable character in the movie.

From virtually the first scene in Gangster Story, you will feel the serious need to leave your brain at the door. Do not be worried. This is a normal reaction, I assure you.

In a sequence that really must be seen to be believed, Jack calls the local police department pretending to be a film studio exec, asking for several cops to play themselves in a fake robbery scene (really) outside of a bank building, all while he's actually robbing the safe inside. Never mind how absolutely no one at any point asks for any permits (you know, being in Orange County and all), but none of the cops question why only Jack is present at the building front with them (with no crew to speak of), even if it's just a rehearsal.

No, you're not looking at two different scenes. 

This is really how this sequence is framed.

Local crime boss Earl Dawson soon gets wind of the robbery, and angry that an outsider pulled a job in his territory, he sends two henchmen after Jack.

We're supposed to believe Jack is able to at least be briefly unnoticeable in the racetrack crowd. However, when it's six-foot-something, dark-haired Walter Matthau in the middle of a sparse area, that's a stretch to say the least.

After evading the henchmen at the track, Jack walks into a library, looking for work. The librarian doesn't seem to be all that fazed when Jack tells her flat out that he's a bank robber.

Having met on the Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, 

Matthau and Grace married in 1959.

A shot from the obligatory "falling in love" montage, 

though adorable in its own way.

And while we do get some answer as to why Carol takes to Jack the way she does (having been abandoned by her friends, mainly), the script makes this dynamic confusing at best, especially later on.

Matthau and Grace have some chemistry, 

but the script gives them little to work with.

Eventually, Jack kills one henchman and knocks out the other, and after Jack flees, Dawson just has Adolph shoot the surviving henchman for his failure, complete with the henchman's voice veering towards Mel Blanc-as-Edward G. Robinson territory.

Which brings me to the dubbing. While all the actors dubbed their own voices in post, the result (among other things) makes me wonder how MST3K never got their hands on this film. 

Rather than hunt Jack down, Dawson instead comes to Carol's house and proposes Jack join his gang. Given how Jack had just killed his other henchman, this would seem like a terrible idea.

But Jack agrees to join for the money and protection, and after a newspaper montage, Jack and Dawson plan to rob the safe at a country club.

Yes, that is Vic "Mel" Tayback as the guard in the middle.

After they pull off the job (and several other men are killed), Carol tells Jack that she is leaving him due to her not being able to deal with him being a murderer. This, despite knowing he had killed before the last robbery, not to mention her having been fine with his other crimes. I point this out because the script doesn't say much regarding a "sense of danger" or anything else to keep her with him. And while a part of me hesitates from criticizing the script too much (mainly due to Matthau re-writing it every day of filming), the truth is, little in the film can be taken seriously (to put it mildly).

There's the curtain pattern again. Keep in mind,

this is supposed to be a completely different apartment.

Again, my synopsis can't do it justice. You'll have to see the rest of the story for yourself.

Make no mistake, Gangster Story is bad. It's best enjoyed as a "so bad, it's good" indie movie, along with being a snapshot of an Orange County that's all but gone now. Not only do I recommend it for bad movie buffs, but it's also a short sit, with a total runtime of (I'm not kidding) 68 minutes. And it's arguably the easiest Matthau film to find, being on YouTube for your viewing amusement.

Car enthusiasts should get a kick out of the rods seen in Gangster Story.

Thankfully, the Gangster Story story has a happy ending. Not only did it outgross its competitor, The Wreck of the Mary Deere (so many questions), but Matthau and Grace stayed married until Matthau's death in 2000. 

TIDBITS AND SUCH 

Matthau and Grace's son Charlie Matthau (above) went on to be a successful director himself, directing his father in The Grass Harp (based on the novel by his mother's friend Truman Capote) and The Marriage Fool (a.k.a. Love After Death) co-starring Carol Burnett. 

Garry Walberg (Adolph) would go on to play Lt. Frank Monahan on the series Quincy, M.E. from 1976 to 1983.

Makeshift home video covers are nothing new for films like Gangster Story, but these are something to behold. While the first two aren't terrible, the last one, with a mustachioed Matthau and the NYC skyline (neither of which are in the actual film), also shows the World Trade Center towers, which wouldn't be built for at least another decade.

Copyright © Chynna Moore