Hong Kong

If you're wondering where Indiana Jones came from, here it is. The picture starts off with an American adventurer on a cargo plane in China, a husky, middle-aged Irish-American brunette. He's wearing a brown leather pilot's jacket and a matching fedora, and finds a young Chinese boy stowing away behind some cargo. Except for the extravagant action shots, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom follows the Reagan plot more or less perfectly for the first twenty minutes. I wonder if it was a deliberate rip-off on the part of Spielberg, or a subconscious "homage"?

After that, it's a reasonably pleasant 1950's spy thriller, with the good guy holding off the insidious red menace until the next time, saving both the foxy damsel in distress and the cute little Chinese boy.

A fun watch in and of itself, typical of the times and genre, and interesting as a bit of history, a probably unwitting building block for one of Hollywood's best known series.