A bunch of dumb rich Americans travel to the north of China unaware or uncaring of a current conflict happening between the Nationalist government and Revels. The Japanese are non existing within this conflict.
Now the American stupidity isn't do to they're travelling to the Northern Territories. After all businesses need to continue on, missionaries continue helping local communities and the world keeps spinning.
Truly their stupidity comes about as a result of their brass emotional and cocky disposition towards their future captives, a Chinese Rebel group led by one General Wu Yen Fang(As played by Boris Karloff).
There very brass towards this General and it's only by sheer luck that there able to survive.
For one of these Americans had saved the General's life some years earlier.
And now the Fang is quite grateful and decides to let the man live despite numerous interruptions, breakout attempts and a secret Communications that lets the Nationalist government know of the rebels current location and the prisoners predicaments.
I'd say there's more than enough excuses to kill them at this point.
The General still seems very grateful, he even stops the execution of the man when he claims that everything is falling out of his hands.
He was even able to stop the execution of this man by one of his superiours
by shooting this senior directly in front of all the other Rebels.
General Fang has something of a grand reputation and people are willing to follow him regardless of what he does.
So I write a lot of this as a joke mainly to indicate just how silly the premise is. But really it is quite enjoyable.
It's just your typical American Western only they've replaced foreign Mexican Villages with that of a Chinese and move to the war conflicts from 1880 up until about 1930-38.
It's a great idea when you get down to it. You can keep all the same sets that you've used in previous films, maintained a similar cinematic Style to other Westerns.
But by simply changing altering the culture you can present an already established movie as something completely new.
I was expecting this movie to devolve down into a bad love triangle.
As these two guys who are fighting for financial and physical possession of oil rights to this Northern Chinese District are also simultaneously in love with the same woman (even though one of them is getting a divorce from her.)
But the movie doesn't really care about that.
Instead it actually wants to focus on Boris Karloff's character of the General and his weird imprisonment of the entire town.
We don't get too much time with this given at the movies only an hour long. But it still feels like a breath of fresh air in the face of what could have ultimately been another poorly done dis-interesting romantic drama between three people that you ultimately don't care about.
But they're smart they know you're only here from Boris Karloff. So they give you the man you want to see and everyone else is kind of bear is a chess piece.
The weird thing with this movie is that easily could have been expanded on.
Now I'm not sure this could have been a cut-down version of the film there's a lot of those out there.
However if this is the original cut they could have easily added another 20 possibly even 30 minutes.
And all they have to do is put a bit more investment into some of the internal dialogue with the American prisoners and their Chinese captors or even just give us a bit more time on the train where we encounter this assassination attempt of a Chinese National Rebel.
They could have made a whole film of that in its own right as a bunch of Americans are being held captive and accused of killing a high-ranking Chinese man while other Chinese detective (and possibly even other Americans) go on an investigation to try and find the true culprits. A Sinister Underground assassination Clan that happens to work for the rebel forces.
Come to think of it this could have easily become a Mr.Wong Detective movie. Oh what could have been.
Overall it's extremely simple and short little movie.
Americans going to a Frontier Chinese-style Village. The whole place gets surrounded by rebels there's minor internal conflicts and the Grim determination to stay alive. Finally there's a battle scenario in where the Chinese national government shows up and fights General Fang's Rebel Army. It's a great deal of fun if you can find it.
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