BY DOUG OSWALD
John
Wayne is merchant sea Captain Tom Wilder, an American being held prisoner by
Chinese Communists, in “Blood Alley,†a Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray release.
The 1955 film is the first of two movies in which the Duke would co-star with
Lauren Bacall (they worked together again on the Duke’s final film, “The Shootist,â€
released in 1976). The Duke copes with prison life, presumably after being
tortured, by looking up toward the ceiling and talking to “Baby,†his imaginary
girlfriend with whom he shares his thoughts out loud to us and to his captors
who believe he’s gone crazy. His prison routine is broken as the movie opens
when a message arrives hidden in a fresh mattress giving him instructions for
his escape along with a pistol and a Russian uniform. The guards have been
bribed making for an easy escape after a fire is started in his prison cell.
He
reaches the safety of a nearby village with the help of Big Han (Mike Mazurki).
In the village he meets Mr. Tso (Paul Fix), Susu (Joy Kim) and Cathy Grainger
(Bacall). Cathy wants Tom to help move the people of the village to the safety
of Taiwan and to rescue her father, a doctor, but they later learn he’s been
murdered by the Chinese. They arrange the hijacking of a Chinese ferry, making
it appear the vessel has sunk. It turns out many months of preparation have
gone into this effort. The ferry is refitted with a new boiler and Tom pilots
the boat down the river and through Blood Alley, the nickname of the area in the
Formosa Strait between mainland China and Taiwan.
In
spite of taking place in Communist China during the Cold War, the movie is
largely apolitical and focuses on the mission and escape by river boat to
Taiwan, an area still disputed by China as a rogue province. The movie works on
that level as an adventure drama so I’m not going to complain too much. The
Communist Chinese soldiers and sailors are never truly menacing and are barely
a threat. The movie has other more obvious problems, such as the casting of
non-Asians as Asians. With so many terrific Asian actors available in the 1950s,
it is baffling why post WWII Hollywood still chose to cast well known actors in
Asian roles. Even the Duke was famously miscast as Genghis Khan a year later in
“The Conqueror†in 1956. Sometimes Hollywood got it right, sometimes not, but
it certainly is a snapshot of that era.
Among
the villagers is Anita Ekberg as Wei Ling. While she has major billing on the
movie poster, she has little in the way of dialog and very few scenes which are
mostly in long-shot. The white elephant in the room is the casting of well
known character actor Paul Fix and blonde sex symbol Anita Ekberg as Asians. Mazurki
almost gets away with it as Big Han, but at nearly 6’5†he’s pushing the
believability index. All-in-all, Mazurk is not too distracting and is always a
welcome sight in every production he’s appeared in and a very underrated
character actor.
The
movie was to originally star Robert Mitchum as Tom, but he was fired over a
disagreement with the director, William “Wild Bill†Wellman. The Batjac
production was among the Duke’s first as producer and the film’s distributer,
Warner Bros. persuaded the Duke to take the lead role in place of Mitchum or
face possible cancellation of the production. The Duke is fine, but one can
only imagine the on-screen fireworks between Mitchum and Bacall that could have
been. There isn’t much in the way of chemistry between the Duke and Bacall, but
it’s not all the Duke’s fault as Bacall phones in her performance. Much has
been made of the political opposites the stars were in real life. Bacall stated
she and the Duke got along just fine and never discussed politics. This was
true of the Duke throughout his life as he was able to work with and develop
lifelong friendships with people regardless of their political beliefs.
The
movie was filmed on location just off the coast of California with location
shooting in Stockton, San Francisco, San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, San
Rafael and Belvedere Island. Photographed by William H. Clothier, he makes the
tight shots believable as China, but at times it appears as though the river
boat passes the same island more than once throughout the journey and the movie
feel restricted by not opening up wide shots of the Chinese landscape. Veteran
set designer Victor A. Gangelin created terrific sets that help compensate for
the restrictions of the California coast. One of the more fascinating locations
was used in a scene where the crew is stripping wood off of the hulls of old
ships. This was filmed at the San Pablo Yacht Club/Marina. The marina piled up
old ships as an artificial reef for the entrance to the club.
Released
on 1 October 1955, the movie had a tight production budget of two million
dollars and barely made back its cost. While the Batjac production was directed
by Wellman, some scenes were directed by the Duke when Wellman became ill. The
screenplay was written by Albert Sidney Fleischman from his book with a score by
Roy Webb.
The
Blu-ray release by the Warner Archive looks and sounds terrific clocking in at 115
minutes. Extras on the disc include two episodes from the “Warner Bros.
Presents†TV series in which the Duke gives scripted responses to host Gig
Young regarding the release of “Blood Alley.†There are also newsreels from the
premier and the trailer. The movie is recommended for fans of the Duke and Cold
War era drama.
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