Bombs Over Burma

Poverty Row PRC produced this film that stars Anna May Wong as a lovely and dedicated Chinese school teacher who joins the Chinese cause to defend her country from Japan's attacks. It's a cheap film, typical PRC, but one of the better products from that studio.

Bombs Over Burma has school teacher Wong first witnessing an attack on her village from the air where one of her little pupils is killed. After that she joins the cause and because she's a school teacher and presumably can read and write she gets into intelligence work.

Sometime later she's on a bus with a mixed group of international travelers that is forced to spend a night at a monastery. It's there she will ferret out the spy.

Don't look down the cast list to spot who might be the slim traitor. If you pick who I think you'll pick you'll be wrong.

For a PRC film it's not half bad.

Anna May Wong is a Chinese school teacher Lin Yang, who is also a spy for the "good guys" during WW II. She is traveling with an international group, who must discover who is leaking information to the Japanese bombers. The story is pretty good, but the sound quality is poor in parts of the film, with quite a bit of static in the soundtrack. Also lots of stock wartime footage thrown in. I was quite impressed at how the women could keep their hair and makeup just perfect on this long, hard roadtrip. Leslie Denison ( Roger Howe ) was a busy guy in those days - made 12 films in 1942, and 14 in 1943, in large and small roles. Wong had just made Lady from Chunking, the year before, another Alexander/Stern production about wartime China. Astute viewers will recognize the large, annoying Dan Seymour (Brogranza), who had played Captain Renard in To Have and Have Not. Too bad they didn't give him a larger role in this film - might have helped spruce it up. Connie Leon, who was actually British, provides the only laughs as the Chinese customs agent who taunts each person in the group as they are questioned when leaving town. This was just the third film for Ned Young (Slim Jenkins), and only the second credited role for lovely blonde Teala Loring, who seems to be the daughter of Doctor somebody or other, going to Chunking to check on him. Entertaining film, quite short at 65 minutes. It was a little odd... in the credits for the film, they use the PRC symbol for "producers releasing corp", but that's also the abbreviation for "Peoples Republic of China"...

"Bombs Over Burma" is a cheap B-movie from PRC...a tiny production company that specialized in making cheap, crappy B-movies! Usually, when I see that a movie is from PRC, I significantly lower my expectations! This film, it turns out, is no exception.

When the film begins, a teacher (Anna May Wong) is alarmed because the town is being attacked by Japanese planes. However, one of the children in the class is amazingly dim....and instead of seeking shelter, this terrible little actor dances about...enjoying the Japanese carnage! Soon, he's assuming room temperature...and his death scene is unintentionally funny. Soon, the teacher is recruited for a mission to help her people...and she ends up stuck on the Burma Road with several others. Soon, it becomes apparent that one of them is in league with the Japanese...and they need to figure it out quickly.

Apart from the overuse of stock footage as well as the bad acting by the child, the film is amazingly dull considering it's all about war. Watchable but honestly I had a hard time sticking with this one.

Anna May Wong is a school teacher, and dedicated to the cause of China. She is at Lashio boarding a truck convoy back to Burma with a an assortment of strangers, taking the Burma Road back to China. A bridge is out on the route, and while men work at restoring it, the group takes refuge in a monastery. It soon becomes apparent that the Japanese are uncannily precise about destroying such convoys. One of their number, or perhaps one of thee monks, is giving information to the enemy.

The copy I looked at was in very poor shape, and the fact that PRC was the company producing this was no recommendation, but the director was Joseph Lewis. Between Miss Wong and him, I decided to take a look. With Robert E. Cline as the cinematographer, I could see that the compositions were excellent, and the camera moved to maintain compositions. There was a good deal of suspense throughout the movie. Perhaps a good copy would raise my opinion, but what is there suggests a decent little wartime thriller.

So much more could have been done with this production if it had been better funded. always nice to see Anna May Wong