China Gate
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Samuel Fuller
1957/USA
Globe Enterprises
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win. – Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s[/box]

Sam Fuller keys in on many familiar Viet Nam tropes years before America was in the war.

An international mercenary force is backing the French in the Indochina War.  The USSR is smuggling supplies to the Viet Cong through a network of tunnels near the China Gate. The French call on “Lucky Legs” (Angie Dickinson), a boozy mixed-race entertainer to use her seductive talents and connections to find out the exact location of the tunnel.  She refuses the mission for any amount of money but agrees to do it for a guarantee that her five-year-old son can be sent to the U.S.

She is not happy when she finds out that Sgt. Brock (Gene Barry) will lead the Foreign Legion patrol.  She and Brock were married but he deserted her when their son turned out to look Chinese and not white like his wife.  Now everybody in the movie thinks Brock is a complete louse and tells him so whenever possible.

We soon discover that the couple’s love has not diminished, though it will take the rest of the film for Brock to accept his son.  Lucky Leg woos Viet Cong leader Maj. Cham (Lee Van Cleef), who is also of mixed race origins for info on the tunnels.  The film ends with some heavy combat and explosions.  With Nat King Cole, who also sings the title song a couple of times, as one of the patrol and Marcel Dalio as an aged one-legged French priest.

From the small boy clutching the puppy at the beginning of the film (the dog is the last edible animal in Hanoi) to other larger-than-life situations later, this film could be by none other than Samuel Fuller.  Another trademark is his anti-racist theme and hard-hitting combat dialogue.  I may not have been in the mood for weirdness when I saw it, though, as the film kind of dragged for me.

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