Shanghai Express (1932)(DVD) + Night Plane from Chungking (1943)(DVD-R) + Peking Express (1951)(DVD-R)

Get the original film, Shanghai Express (1932) And Night Plane from Chungking (1943) And Peking Express (1951) for 20% off their individual prices!

Shanghai Express (1932)


 Starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette
Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Print: Black/white
Runtime: 83 min.
Genre: Drama

One of the most famous and influential star-director collaborations in the history of cinema, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg made seven features together which immortalized the actress as a glamorous and enigmatic movie siren while confirming the director's reputation as a supreme stylist of mood, atmosphere and eroticism through his dazzling command of the medium. Set against the backdrop of a Chinese civil war, SHANGHAI EXPRESS is an opulent romantic adventure that focuses on a diverse group of passengers traveling by express train from Peking to Shanghai. Among them is Captain Doc Harvey (Clive Brook), who finds himself, reunited with his former lover, now an infamous adventuress who calls herself Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich). Desire and deception follow, culminating in a tense hostage situation when their train is hijacked by a Chinese warlord.




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

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 

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.