Review of Blood Alley

Sprung from prison to rescue villagers from the grip of the bad guys, Mr Wayne - with a wry grin and a cold eye,gets the job done.Not a cactus,a horse,nor a dancing girl in sight,a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost abandoned in the yard rather than a covered waggon.It's 1955 and the beautiful,tragic country of China is once again being raped by Warlords,this time the Communists. Unlike Gladys Ayward in "The Inn of the sixth happiness",who took "her" Chinese overland,Mr Wayne takes "his" Chinese to freedom by ferryboat,aided by village elder Mr Paul Fix and doctor's daughter Miss Lauren Bacall. "Blood Alley" is a pretty good movie reflecting the time when it was o.k. to think communism a "bad thing" and freedom a "good thing". It has since been beasted by proponents of moral equivalence,but such subtleties were not available to most folk 55 years ago. Subsequently history has judged Mao Tse Tung much more harshly than those who hung his picture on their walls a few years after this picture was made.Clearly he was up there with the other giants of their profession,messrs Stalin and Hitler. Propaganda it may have been,but it had a strong foundation in actuality. Mr Wayne - a year away from his Magnum Opus The Searchers" - fits very comfortably into his role of the slightly eccentric Sea Captain.Miss Bacall seems a little lost,as if she is looking for a hook to hang her characterisation on but failing to find one. Mr Fix in the decidedly politically incorrect part of the village elder is rather touching. I was fully expecting "Blood Alley" to be a Republican rant with a rabid Mr Wayne spitting Commies out of his teeth but was pleasantly surprised. A lot of care has been taken all round in its production and it if far better than you might anticipate.Well worth watching.