Tormenta Sobre o Rio Amarelo

Anita Ekberg, hot off her success as the childishly self-centered movie queen "Sylvia" in Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA, is billed above the title in the kind of corn "Sylvia" might have made. The pre-credit narration tells us it's 1959 and guerrilla forces are making it tough for the Chinese but although it's never said, the rebels are obviously Communists, but only because a sickle & star painted on one of their huts tells us so. Today we know how it all turns out but things were still up in the air when this "ripped from the headlines" yarn was lensed. The topical tale proper begins on a train where Anita, a Christian missionary (!), meets a boozy newsie (Georges Marchal) who's traveling to the dam on Yellow River after getting wind of a plot to blow it up. He wants to be there with his camera when it happens and doesn't care that millions will be washed away but he has a change of heart after falling in love with Ekberg and tries to foil the rebel plot...

The superbly stacked Glamazon may have her cascading blonde locks pinned up throughout the film but have no fear, she chucks those Clark Kent glasses and lets her hair down ...but only once, alas, all sans cleavage. Anita also performs surgery on a peasant girl who got stabbed and takes a stab at acting while she's at it in a shudder-inducing fit of hysterics. It's a WTF film for sure, ludicrous in the extreme, but widescreen and Technicolor -and the Ek, of course- make it awfully nice to look at.