Jingoistic in a low key manner, BLOOD ALLEY uses the full charisma of John Wayne to tell the tale of a village of Chinese natives trying to flee the communists by taking a river boat to Hong Kong.
Filmed on glorious backlot sets, the movie is fully entertaining even if its pacing is a little off. The best parts of the film occur even before the boat hits the water, with Wayne making maps, a little coy flirting with Bacall and playful interactions with the townspeople. Once the film gets on the river it becomes deadly serious, with major storms, missile attacks and starvation. The film keeps moving but it feels as if it is stretching it out to epic…

I mainly wanted to watch this because it was the film John Wayne was promoting when he was on I Love Lucy, and now I can see why he was out there promoting it - it's a slog.

Wayne plays Capt. Tom Wilder, a man driven a little mad while being held in captivity in communist China. Then, by a stroke of luck and greased palms, Wilder finds a gun and a Soviet uniform stuffed in his mattress, and he escapes to a small Chinese village where the daughter of a medical missionary (Lauren Bacall) and the local villagers are looking for a way to the British port of Hong Kong. The only way to get there is through the…

Along with The Green Berets, a legitimate candidate for worst John Wayne film I’ve seen — and I’ve seen a lot of them.

Never mind the Cold War politics, it’s incredibly dull and turgid as entertainment. The better part of the first hour is spent sitting around waiting for an adventure to begin. You know it’s a bad sign when the first scene is five or ten or (feels like) fifteen minutes in a prison cell with Wayne’s character talking to himself and behaving stir crazy.

Then the adventure begins after an hour, and it’s completely uninvolving — it does none of the things that make Wayne’s films work. He’s too talkative, for one thing. Throughout the film, Wayne talks to an…

Blood Alley is a tale of escape and survival as an entire Chinese village hijacks an old paddle steamer and attempts to seek refuge in Hong Kong, taking a 300 mile journey with John Wayne at the helm of the ship.

The film starts out well enough, and the first half of the film, the "planning phase", is much more interesting than that last half, in which the plan is executed and we take the long journey through treacherous waters to safety. Where the film seems to falter is that it tries some racially insensitive jokes that really have a hard time landing today, and maybe the Communist leader in the village is a bit too much of a caricature.…

Along with The Green Berets, a legitimate candidate for worst John Wayne film I’ve seen — and I’ve seen a lot of them.

Never mind the Cold War politics, it’s incredibly dull and turgid as entertainment. The better part of the first hour is spent sitting around waiting for an adventure to begin. You know it’s a bad sign when the first scene is five or ten or (feels like) fifteen minutes in a prison cell with Wayne’s character talking to himself and behaving stir crazy.

Then the adventure begins after an hour, and it’s completely uninvolving — it does none of the things that make Wayne’s films work. He’s too talkative, for one thing. Throughout the film, Wayne talks to an…

A group of Chinese people help American Capt. Tom Wilder (John Wayne) escape from a prison in hopes that he will help them escape to Hong Kong on a stolen ferryboat.

Considering all of the talent involved, you really can't help but be disappointed with BLOOD ALLEY. I mean, you've got two major stars in Wayne and Lauren Bacall and you've got them being directed by the wonderful William Wellman. How can a film with those three plus a major budget turn out so bland? I really don't know the answer but you can start with the fact that Wayne never should have been in the lead role but according to reports Robert Mitchum was fired and various others turned…

This was supposed to be a Robert Mitchum picture but he got fired for misbehaving, so we get John Wayne instead. One wonders if the ultra right wing commie bashing politics of this thing came with him, but it is a rousing adventure none the less. Duke plays a hard bitten merchant marine who is recruited by Lauren Bacall to help a village of Chinese families escape communist rule. Depictions of the Chinese characters runs the gamut from respectful to racist and many feature non-Asian actors in the roles. Mike Mazurki manages to pull it off pretty well but the bizarre cameo of a heavily made up Anita Ekberg as Mike's papoose carrying wife is just odd. Did she need…