Bombs Over Burma

"Bombs Over Burma" is a cheap B-movie from PRC...a tiny production company that specialized in making cheap, crappy B-movies! Usually, when I see that a movie is from PRC, I significantly lower my expectations! This film, it turns out, is no exception.

When the film begins, a teacher (Anna May Wong) is alarmed because the town is being attacked by Japanese planes. However, one of the children in the class is amazingly dim....and instead of seeking shelter, this terrible little actor dances about...enjoying the Japanese carnage! Soon, he's assuming room temperature...and his death scene is unintentionally funny. Soon, the teacher is recruited for a mission to help her people...and she ends up stuck on the Burma Road with several others. Soon, it becomes apparent that one of them is in league with the Japanese...and they need to figure it out quickly.

Apart from the overuse of stock footage as well as the bad acting by the child, the film is amazingly dull considering it's all about war. Watchable but honestly I had a hard time sticking with this one.

Anna May Wong is a school teacher, and dedicated to the cause of China. She is at Lashio boarding a truck convoy back to Burma with a an assortment of strangers, taking the Burma Road back to China. A bridge is out on the route, and while men work at restoring it, the group takes refuge in a monastery. It soon becomes apparent that the Japanese are uncannily precise about destroying such convoys. One of their number, or perhaps one of thee monks, is giving information to the enemy.

The copy I looked at was in very poor shape, and the fact that PRC was the company producing this was no recommendation, but the director was Joseph Lewis. Between Miss Wong and him, I decided to take a look. With Robert E. Cline as the cinematographer, I could see that the compositions were excellent, and the camera moved to maintain compositions. There was a good deal of suspense throughout the movie. Perhaps a good copy would raise my opinion, but what is there suggests a decent little wartime thriller.

Anna May Wong is a Chinese school teacher Lin Yang, who is also a spy for the "good guys" during WW II. She is traveling with an international group, who must discover who is leaking information to the Japanese bombers. The story is pretty good, but the sound quality is poor in parts of the film, with quite a bit of static in the soundtrack. Also lots of stock wartime footage thrown in. I was quite impressed at how the women could keep their hair and makeup just perfect on this long, hard roadtrip. Leslie Denison ( Roger Howe ) was a busy guy in those days - made 12 films in 1942, and 14 in 1943, in large and small roles. Wong had just made Lady from Chunking, the year before, another Alexander/Stern production about wartime China. Astute viewers will recognize the large, annoying Dan Seymour (Brogranza), who had played Captain Renard in To Have and Have Not. Too bad they didn't give him a larger role in this film - might have helped spruce it up. Connie Leon, who was actually British, provides the only laughs as the Chinese customs agent who taunts each person in the group as they are questioned when leaving town. This was just the third film for Ned Young (Slim Jenkins), and only the second credited role for lovely blonde Teala Loring, who seems to be the daughter of Doctor somebody or other, going to Chunking to check on him. Entertaining film, quite short at 65 minutes. It was a little odd... in the credits for the film, they use the PRC symbol for "producers releasing corp", but that's also the abbreviation for "Peoples Republic of China"...

Anna May Wong (Lin) is a schoolteacher assigned on a mission by the Chinese Resistance to discover who is tipping off the Japanese for bombing raids. Targets seem to be pinpointed with expert knowledge. On a bus journey, Wong and a cast of characters are held up at a monastery where it becomes obvious that the traitor is among them.

This film has a couple of memorable sequences – the beginning section at the school and the end section at the head of the convoy – that make it a better film than I had expected. There is also some humour thrown in from the naughty schoolboy. My wife and I laughed out loud when he is left in the classroom alone to throw all the schoolwork everywhere. He also has a funny moment where he knows he is wrong and gets up and puts on the naughty hat without any prompting. Very funny.

Unfortunately, the sound quality is poor and this does interfere with some of the dialogue but overall, given the different subject matter, it has to score for novelty value. It's a short film and it's OK entertainment while it lasts.

Some B movies transcend, others lower themselves into the "so bad t's funny' category. But most fall into the general category of 'good B-movie" - entertaining but forgettable.

This film can be enjoyed as a good B-movie, If one doesn't know much of film history, there it ends - a solid B- movie from the early '40s.

But pay attention! I've watched this film several times - it's actually difficult to watch, the scene where the young boy gets wasted by Japanese machine gun fire is not fun. But the images keep pulling me along.

This is a great film, for two reasons. First, director Lewis, cinematographer Cline and editor Henkel are using the film to work out knowledge of film history that more mainstream studios would not have allowed then - Sergei Eisentein's influence is all over the film.

Secondly, Anna May Wong - a great actress relegated to small parts as the 'sultry Asian' - she is truly magnificent here, this performance would have won an Oscar for any other actress at a later time.

Yes it's still a B-movie plot and much of the dialog has to conform to that. But so much of this is rich in construction and detail that I insist it remains a classic - unrecognized but undeniable.