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Friday, July 8, 2022

ESCAPE TO BURMA (1955)

At R.K.O. in the Howard Hughes death-rattle era, indie producer Benedict Bogeaus managed to turn out budget-conscious fare with good directors like Don Siegel and Jacques Tourneur before turning to the ultimate Hollywood vet, Allan Dwan, on a half dozen run-of-the-mill projects.  Barbara Stanwyck did two, CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA (with Ronald Reagan, not seen here) and this jungle plantation drama, probably the most ambitious of the lot.  You’ll need a hearty stomach to look past some threadbare studio work, especially in the first half (stock shots, rear-projection ‘locations’, soundstage exteriors - all second-rate), to say nothing of a story loaded with politically incorrect colonial trappings.  But hold tight for some neat boomerang plot turns; decidedly frank sexual propositions from horny man-on-the-run Robert Ryan; the love-match between Stanwyck & her elephant labor force; and a manly turn from David Farrar’s principled police agent.  The plot has Ryan on the run from a crime he did commit (shooting the Crown Prince to death) and now wooing Babs at her glam estate (for love or protection?) worried Farrar will bring in him in for trial or that Guards of the Prince’s father will nab him for immediate torture & execution.  That's Hollywood pioneer Robert Warrick, like Dwan in the biz since the ‘teens, as the vengeance-seeking ‘Sawbwa’ slathered in Max Factor’s Burmese-tinted pancake makeup.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lots of subfusc editions out there, so beware.  VCI has a decent DVD out.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Who signed off on Stanwyck’s hair?  Not since DOUBLE INDEMNITY has she suffered from such a coif.  Only there it was supposed to be disruptive.

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