Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . in the mid-1950s, when there was still time to contain it. BLOOD ALLEY takes place in a China populated by "only" 500 million folks. BLOOD ALLEY depicts Chinese Imperialists so land-hungry that entire towns disappear overnight, only to pop up on foreign shores days later. Warner reveals that these Chinese-on-the-move are not unlike "worker bees" or "army ants," using their sheer numbers to create instant reefs and islands, as they're doing on a slightly larger scale in the South China Sea today. Warner shows that products made with the Union Label in America represent Humanity's Best Hope. This includes an 1885 made-in-Sacramento ferry in which this story takes place, nearly 60 years after its christening. On the other hand, Warner suggests that we can expect food poisoning from China in return. Recent headlines highlighting poison baby formula, poison pet food, poison formaldehyde plaster board, and countless other "accidentally" poisoned Chinese products bear out the fact that America did not heed Warner's BLOOD ALLEY warning. Owing to the plotting of the devious and disgraced U.S. President Milhouse Nixon, the 21st is the Chinese Century. This flick's British Hong Kong is now 100% Communist, thanks to John Wayne planting a Fifth Column there is BLOOD ALLEY.

PamelaShort In this outlandish, adventure film, John Wayne plays a hardened sea captain, who is freed from a Communist prison. He is heroically taken to a hamlet of villagers who want to escape Red domination. There he encounters Lauren Bacall, the daughter of a missionary doctor killed by the Red Chinese. The villagers reveal their grand plan of escape, taking all 189 souls aboard an ancient, wood-burning ferryboat, with Captain Wayne at the wheel, along the 300-mile route to Hong Kong and freedom. Before all this takes place, there are some tense encounters to the village from communist Chinese soldiers and a smouldering current between Bacall and Wayne. This movie was filmed at China Camp in San Rafael, near San Francisco, and in the San Francisco Bay, which sufficiently captures authentic hilly Chinese locales as well as the reedy shores and choppy waters of the Formosa Strait. Blood Alley is one of John Wayne's most politically propagandistic films, and was produced by his company Batjac, with William Wellman directing. The acting is adequate with a charming performance given by Kim Joy as Bacall's maid. Although the going is rough along " Blood Alley, " the trip is reasonably absorbing with the help of the entire cast of interesting characters, who amazingly manage to pull it entertainingly all together. John Wayne fans may find this film an interesting change for the Duke.

magicmyth505 This movie seems to get a bum rap in John Wayne histories as a trite anti communist movie, just pushing Wayne's right wing politics. Speaking as a long time leftie, it is worth noting the politics in China was not Marxist socialism at the time but a fascist dictatorship under Mao. And shocking as this may seem the film, while the communist are the heavies, is not anti-Chinese but is about the Duke taking a group of boat people to safety over terrible waterways in a rickety boat where they are received by a British soldier with the words "Refugees God bless them" Like that would happen today. More likely to spend the next 10 years in a refugee camp than get a welcome. A curious thing that a film made by someone who is often accused of being a right wing extremist is so 'liberal' in its response to refugee issues.The character is not quite in the usual Duke mode. Apparently they were negotiating with Bogart to do the role and then Duke had to step in and its a little like they did not change the role to make it a John Wayne role. There is a little bit of Casablanca 'I stick my neck out for nobody' before he comes to support the villagers wholeheartedly. And a little bit of African Queen bum. Wayne is a lot less heroic than usual, the bravest thing he does is steer the boat and save the heroine from being raped by using a gin with a bayonet. He even needs a couple of Chinese monks to help him when he can't punch out one small Chinese assassin. And the Chinese are the ones who do all the planning, work out how to get away and solve most of the problems.The costuming is interesting too. Wayne either looks ridiculous (intentionally) in European clothing 3 sizes too big for him, or wears a Chinese villager's costume that integrates him into the village.The film is beautifully shot, William Clothier is the photographer, and the old ferry they use sort of has an African Queen quality to her, a character in herself.Lauren Bacall is Lauren Bacall but at least she and Duke have some chemistry going. The kiss at the end looks like they are really connecting not like Duke is wishing to god he is somewhere else which can happen with some leading ladies. Some people have criticised the talking to "Baby" but I thought it was rather fun and a really clever way to get some quick exposition.The film does have European actors playing Chinese, including the buffoon, but most of the performances are pretty restrained and not caricatures. There is a little bit of fifties pigeon English, mimicked quite affectionately by Duke and Laureen Bacall but as the character that does it is the one that pulls Wayne's character into line, it does not grate like some fifties films that use it.All in all, Blood Alley is a film I had not seen for a long time but surprised myself how much I enjoyed it and found quite relevant in its presentation of the boat people/ refugee picture.

Joel Weymouth "Blood Alley" details the story of a Chinese village trying to escape Maoist oppression during the 1950's. It is definitely anti-Communist in its theme and pro-West (United States) in showing the very common desire by those under Communist rule to escape that rule. The performances were okay, not memorable. The chemistry between Bacall and Wayne was okay, but not like Maureen O'Hara (whenever you saw Wayne and Ohara you honestly thought there was something between them). But there was chemistry, also shown later when Wayne starred opposite Bacall in "The Shootist". Basically, this is one of those movies where John Wayne played "John Wayne" – a remark Travolta made in "Get Shorty" referring to "El Dorado" and "Rio Bravo" about John Wayne movies. In some John Wayne movies, John Wayne showed his acting depth ('The Cowboys", "True Grit", "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon", "Fort Apache", "Stage Coach", "Red River"), some he just played "himself". This was one of them. That was not necessarily a bad thing: because the "himself" character was the stereotypical American Ideal of manhood, who is strong, independent, flawed, a man that loves liberty, and will fight to the death for the weak. That is the type of character that "Tom Wilder" played by Wayne in "Blood Alley".Since "Blood Alley"'s main theme is escape from a communist state: Communism is the "bad guy". So the movie must take the early portions of it to illustrate how bad the "Bad Guy" is. Once the escape takes place, then it is a classic chase movie with some good moments of suspense with rescue in the nick of time. The movie is uplifting and of course has a happy ending. The things that leave this movie open to criticism should be taken in context with 1955. Casting Paul Fix, Mike Mazurki, and Anita Ekburg as Chinese would be unthinkable today in the "uptight" period that we live in: I call it leftist Puritanism. But we must remember, there were not a lot of Asian leading men or women- and certainly not that many Chinese – as a matter of fact there are very few today if you think about it. So it is not strange to have Caucasians playing Chinese. One might laugh at having Anita Ekberg playing one, blond hair and all. What people also don't realize is not all Chinese nationals have the typical features that we consider Asian (the epicanthal folds or "slanted eyes"). I lived in China for many years, there are a large number of ethnic Russians from Inner Mongolia and they get extremely insulted if you call attention to the fact that they don't "look" Chinese. Furthermore, to the Chinese: casting a Japanese as a Chinese is far more offensive. Just ask a Mainland Chinese what they think of the Japanese. Casting based on the eyes is ignorance and arrogance of the American "thought police" who enforce this correctness. These "technical" issues with the movie that I saw are understandable and I place them with Derek Jacoby fulfilling the role of narrator in his cashmere ensemble right out of GQ in Henry V (Kenneth Branaugh). "Blood Alley" is a very good period piece to understand the fear and lines drawn between Communism and the Liberty found in the United States. To understand what really happened reading/watching histories that are produced 50 years later after never illustrates why people did what they did. This movie is not right-wing because Lauren Bacall was extremely liberal, but like most Democrats of the 1950's she was extremely ANTI-COMMUNIST and was a patriot like John Wayne: she wanted America to win. It was propaganda, like all movies are propaganda, because it tries to lead the viewer to a certain conclusion. If the director can't do this, he is a lousy story-teller. "Blood Alley" makes the following points: 1 Communism is bad. 2 Communists oppress their populations: True 3.People desired to leave Communism: True 4. Communists murder those who won't conform: True. The fact that you want the Chinese village to get away means William Wellman is good. "Blood Alley" was also allegorical. Because at this time, Hungary was in revolt and thousands of Hungarians were making their escape using the bridge at Andau. You really could not make a movie about escaping over a bridge because it would be boring. So "Blood Alley" was a morale building movie reminiscent of the movies made during World War 2 where Hollywood cooperated in the war against Nazism and all its evil. This movie was made during the Cold War with Hollywood at that time divided between avid Anti-Communists and Communist apologists. I have always been intrigued by the hypocrisy of liberals that wholeheartedly fought Nazism which was not really a threat against the United States, they really only threatened Europe, but dismissed Communism that was openly and passionately trying to overthrow the republican (not party) system of government in the United States and replace it with a socialistic Marxist/Leninist System. Communists had shown their willingness to be the aggressor already in Korea, Hungary, and Viet Nam. This movie was raising alarm bells. Strangely for all those who have this neutral view toward Communism, Communist countries had to put walls up to keep their people within their borders and employ trusted guards to shoot anyone trying to escape. But still with this reality, people tried to escape, because the value of freedom was worth the risk of death. They wanted freedom, and that meant leaving one political system to live under another – the American System. With the current political climate in the US where we have those who would like to change that system of Liberty to a Socialistic system with Marxist undertones, we should ponder the legacy of those people commemorated in "Blood Alley". "Better Dead than Red" was not just a cliché to some during the 1950's and now in the early 21st Century.