Sam Fuller was no coddled film school graduate......he lived a real life, adventurous and dangerous. A New York newspaper crime reporter in his teens and a battle-hardened World War II veteran, Fuller didn't need to imitate anyone else's work. He possessed more than enough of an unforgettable lifetime to influence and inform his swiftly-paced violent little movies.
"China Gate", among the movies he pumped out during his 1950's stay at 20th Century Fox, isn't considered among his all time best, but BQ loved stumbling upon it, It's vintage Sam Fuller......a boiling over pot of melodrama, inflamed romance, pathos and lots of Viet Cong commies stabbed, machine gunned and blown to smithereens. And like many Fuller movies of this period, photographed in that odd intersection of formats, black-and-white Cinemascope.
Set in 1954 French Indochina (soon to become the tarpit sucking down the U.S. called Vietnam), the film hands a sure-death mission to a ragtag group of American mercenaries and French legionnaires - to blow up a stash of Russian armaments on the Chinese border. The group's leader, (Gene Barry) desperately needs a guide through enemy territory and appeals to his Eurasian ex-wife 'Lucky Legs' (played by Angie Dickinson and her legendary legs). a former bar owner and...uh...well, let's just say known as the hostess with the mostess throughout Indochina. Lucky's non-negotiable price.....passage to the U.S. for their fully Asian little boy, whom Barry, in a fit of racist disgust, wants nothing to do with.
Off they go northward toward China, dodging land mines, and sneaking up on numerous commie sentries after Angie plies them hi-how-are-ya's and booze. (Fuller walks a fine line here, vaguely implying that Lucky Legs, who seems to know every Viet Cong in the country personally, may have done more for them than supply drinks and good fellowship...)
Lucky and the gang finally reach Cong HQ, home to tons of Russian bombs and Lucky's ex-boyfriend and fellow Eurasian, Major Cham (An impressively bare-chested Lee Van Cleef, still a decade away from his Italian western career) Amid portraits of Ho Chi Mihn and Joe Stalin, Van Cleef promises Angie and her son a life in Moscow, but you know that's not on her agenda, since Barry has already begun to see the error of his racist ways. In true Sam Fuller fashion, all hell eventually breaks loose and only a few cast members survive the film's climax.
True, there's ridiculous stuff you'd only see in old, old movies......such as Dickinson and Van Cleef, their eyes ever so slightly pinned back, playing Eurasians. And Nat King Cole, who's surprisingly good as one of Gene Barry's mercenaries, gets to casually stroll around bombardment rubble, warbling the title song. Absurd....but who wouldn't miss a chance to hear Cole's rich distinctive singing voice? (And Fuller gifts him with a harrowing scene where Cole struggles to control his agony after his foot's impaled on a booby trap spike)
Right about now, would come the usual catchphrase 'they sure don't make 'em like this anymore'. True enough, but what the BQ considers even sadder.....that they don't make directors like Samuel Fuller anymore. So for that fact alone, we'll fire off 4 stars...(****)
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