Night Plane from Chungking + Peking Express DVD-R

Get the original film, Night Plane from Chungking (1943), and the remake, Peking Express (1951), for 20% off their individual prices!

NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUNGKING (1943)

Starring Robert Preston, Ellen Drew, Otto Kruger, Steven Geray, Tamara
Geva
Directed by Ralph Murphy

Print: black/white
Runtime: 69 min.
Genre: adventure
Print quality: B

An adequate wartime filler, Night Plane from Chungking features Robert
Preston as the captain of the titular aircraft. En route from Chungking to
India, the plane crashes, leaving captain and passengers stranded in a
jungle surrounded by Japanese troops. It has been learned that one of
the passengers is a Nazi spy; Preston hopes it isn't the lovely Ellen Drew.
Night Plane from Chungking was a remake of the earlier, and more
expensive, Marlene Dietrich adventure Shanghai Express, substituting
planes for trains. When movie villains shifted from Nazis to Communists
in the 1950s, the story was filmed once more as Peking Express (53).

PEKING EXPRESS (1951)

Starring Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet, Edmund Gwenn, Marvin Miller, Benson Fong
Directed by William Dierterle

Print: black/white
Runtime: 95 min.
Genre: drama
Print quality: A

Peking Express was the second remake of Josef vonSternberg's Shanghai Express. In the original film, a group of railroad passengers escaping war-torn China are overtaken by Chinese; in the first remake, Night Plane to Chungking, a plane is forced down in a jungle surrounded by Japanese troops. In Peking Express, the chief villains are Chinese again, but the passengers are now refugees of the Communists. Joseph Cotten (as a doctor) and Corinne Calvet (as a "woman of the world") are among the pilgrims threatened by Oriental outlaw Marvin Miller and his gang. The elements of social and religious hypocrisy in the original Shanghai Express are downplayed in the 1951 version, as is the shady past of leading lady Calvet (who inadequately fills the role originated by Marlene Dietrich). Peking Express is not the classic that the vonSternberg film had been, but on its own is a snappy little melodrama.