War Double Feature: Blood Alley / The Sea Chase

This is another two-fur bundling deal; you get one pearl and one turd in the package. It is sometimes hard to take John Wayne seriously as a maritime character because he is and will always remain America’s quintessential Cowboy stereotype. I’ll start first with Blood Alley because I found it extremely difficult to stomach the Duke acting both as a crazy and as an overly optimistic human being. He traditionally exudes a down to earth darkness that is both profound and genuine in his character portrayals. In Blood Alley he steps out on a limb with his “Baby” routine and almost glib attitude towards the peril of the journey at hand and the Red Chinese. The only redeeming quality of this film is Wayne’s love interest the legendary Loren Bacall. For once Hollywood casted a woman who was not old enough to be Wayne’s daughter as so often done when leading men reach their fifties and sixties. If you look closely you’ll catch such notable BatJack extras as Paul Fix (he would go on to play Dr. Mark Piper in the Star Trek OTS Where No Man Has Gone Before) and Mike Mazurki (the French Polynesian constable in Donavan’s Reef). The ending is a total train wreck as a model of the riverboat Wayne’s is piloting steams into a crude miniature set of Hong Kong harbor. Unfortunately CGI had not been invented yet so the viewer is forced to endure this farce of an ending as the closing credits roll.John Farrow’s 1955 high-seas adventure tale The Sea Chase on the other hand is a little pearl, little in it is not a blockbuster of a movie but one that John Wayne should of never appeared in (remember the Duke as Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Yikes). For starters, the Duke is casted as a German merchant marine captain on the eve of WWII. He doesn’t even try to improvise a high German accent in the film. The story is, however, a classic yarn of adventure, personal honor and commitment, which redeems this inconsequential clunker from being a total stink bomb. In my humble opinion, producer John Farrow could of done a better job in casting the character Captain Ehrlich with the likes of say James Mason (Desert Fox and The Blue Max), Kurt Kreuger (The Enemy Below), or even Curd Jurgens whom would have made the captain a more believable character. Personally, Lyle Bettger (Greatest Show on Earth with Charleston Heston) who portrays the stories antihero as Chief Officer Kirchner in this film could have been a more convincing Captain Ehrlich and maybe saved it. Additionally, some of the crewmembers would have been more convincingly portrayal with actors like Hardy Kruger, Jeremy Kemp, and Max von Syden. Lana Turner, cast as Wayne’s love interest, is unconvincing in her performance and again the age difference is… well creepy. David Farrar delivers a sound performance as the films protagonist and storyteller Royal Navy Commander Jeff Napier.The cast of this movie reads like a who’s who of American film actors, James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gun Smoke fame), a very young Cluade Akins, John Doucette (portrayed General Truscott in Patton) and my personal favorite Allen Hale of Gilligan’s Island fame. Surprisingly, Hale is only appears in three scenes and only speaks in two. As for the story line in The Sea Chase, it starts out well, if not down right exciting. The tramp steamer Ergenstrasse slips out of Sidney harbor in a blinding fog using nothing but nerves of steel and dead reckoning navigation, maneuvers south to avoid capture by the allies where they commandeers supplies at a shipwreck station where Chief Officer Kirchner shoots three stranded fishermen. Then the crew of the Ergenstrasse now branded as war criminals, she steams to a Polynesian island where the crew cuts wood to fire the ships boilers and finally the voyage across the open Pacific Ocean to Valparaiso, Chili where the movie then starts to fall apart. The final scenes where the Ergenstrasse is given up by the Nazi regime in Berlin and then intercepted by the Royal Navy is pretty hooky to say the least and leads this viewer to believe that the director just wanted to wrap up this turd quickly so he could go home.In summary, Blood Alley is a total nightmare plain and simple. Shame that an actor of John Wayne’s stature was sucked into this bucket of fish in the first place. The Sea Chase on the other hand is worth viewing if only for the fun of pointing out all the extra characters who would eventually go on to very rewarding television and movie careers in the 60’s and 70’s.

Main reason I got it was because it's John Wayne! BA is one of the hokey Cold War films of the 50s - plenty of action against the evil Commies! The Sea Chase is somewhat strange because The Duke plays a German ship captain at the beginning of World War II trying to head back to Germany to do his duty (even though he doesn't particularly care for the Nazis) - the British and Australians are trying to catch him because of the murder of British sailors at a weather station by the onlyhard-core Nazi on board - the always wonderfully evil Lyle Bettger! There are also a very young pre-Gunsmoke James Arness and even younger Tab Hunter as two of the German sailors. Fun to watch both films!

These are both great classics.

Blood Alley is a story set in a period of time in Chinas past where the people often took great risks to survive. And with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall as the leads the story cannot help but be good! Becall was far better than she was ever given credit for being. And plays a character that is quite believable. The Sea Chase is a naval story set at the beginning of WWII. There is action, drama, intrigue, betrayal, and romance in the story set on a German vessel that inot what one would think of as a ship of war. Both movies are well worth the price alone but you get both.

Very good movies and fortunately a friend advise to flip the dvd to view second movie. I never ran into that approach for movies on DVDs. I suggest sending a note to let people know.

Neither of these is John Wayne's best work and both seem a little sluggish in getting going. In "Blood Alley" John seems to be just going through the motions but the story is interesting enough to make up for it. I liked "The Sea Chase" better but the ending has always bothered me a little. Still, two good movies and a very good price is nothing to sneeze at.

I really love John Wayne movies and I would suggest both of these to be excellent in production and quality.

these are good movies

Very pleased hard to get movies quality and service good.

good

This is a very good movie, am a John Wayne and James Arness fan so loved it. It was very well done.