 | MOVIE #1,279 • 🍿🍿 • 12.14.23 This is the first John Wayne movie I’ve reviewed on this site and honestly it’s probably the first movie I’ve ever seen intentionally (or attempted to). I don’t think this one is held in high regard but who knows (he made well over a 100 movies — I had no idea he was that prolific honestly). I know my dad is/was a big fan and I have vague memories of being bored watching stuff he was in as a kid. So, with the caveat that I don’t go deep with the man, I have to wonder: are all his movies like this? And by “like this” I mean full of HIM doing one of three things: monologuing weirdly (why is he talking to himself?), having a demeaning one-sided conversation with someone who doesn’t speak English, or having a demeaning one-sided conversation with a woman, who might as well not be speaking English. In other words, this shit sucks ass! |
When I started this James Hong filmography project, the films that I was least excited to watch were the 1950s entries where he is always playing “Uncredited [insert Asian stereotype here].” He depicts a communist soldier here and actually has some lines too (in un-subtitled Mandarin because it’s simply not important what this cliché is yapping about in his native language)...
Ugh. On top of it being plainly offensive, it's guilty of the far worse crime of being an ugly, tedious slog. I didn't quite make it halfway through so I don't know if that was Hong’s only moment on screen. The film’s (and Wayne’s — the two are indissolubly related) politics are presented so bluntly that it almost feels like parody. And they are very, very bad, for the era they were made and forever…
I know Wayne is in some classic John Ford films that I suppose I’ll see eventually, but I found him and his schtick unlikable in the worst possible way.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,278 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,280 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,278 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,280 ⫸
Blood Alley is a 1955 American seafaring Cold War adventure film produced by John Wayne, directed by William A. Wellman, and starring Wayne and Lauren Bacall. The film was distributed by Warner Bros. and shot in CinemaScope and Warnercolor. The film depicts a voyage from Chiku Shan, a village on the Communist Chinese coast, all the way to Hong Kong via the Formosa Strait. It was released on October 1, 1955.
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