Peking Express

During the McCarthy years the making of anti-Communist films was one way that studios and their employees assured the witchfinders that they were true blue Americans. Paramount dusted off one of their classics from the Thirties and remade it with anti-Communist twist and called in The Peking Express. It was hardly as good as the original.

Joseph Cotten plays a doctor with the United Nations World Health Organization and the new People's Government has need of his services. Corinne Calvet with whom Cotten has history is your international woman of mystery. Calvet is no Marlene Dietrich, but in fairness to her she has a lot less to work with. Edmund Gwenn is a missionary priest who has served in China for decades and he's being given the heave-ho.

If you've seen Shanghai Express you have a fair idea of what is happening. Marvin Miller is our villain, all the other roles are played by genuine Asians. He's the guy who is first a passenger on the train, then his men take the train hostage.

Miller's character is that of a supreme opportunist who joins the Communist cause at the right moment. But he's strictly in business for himself to the absolute horror of idealist Communist Benson Fong who has a really ridiculous part. I mean really, no one could be that dumb.

Cotten being the erudite person he was is given some good lines to defend the American way of life and he delivers them well. He's an idealist in his own way, he works for the UN and the World Health Organization out of an idea that good health should know no country boundaries. I wish some of what he said was in a better film.

I have seen worse anti-Communist films coming from minor studios like Lippert, but this one isn't that much above it.