It's hard to believe that this cliched, relentlessly melodramatic triangle hospital soaper had its genesis in a novel by Nobel-prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. True, it is set against a rather realistic WW2 background. The RKO miniatures specialists and the stock footage department work overtime to blow up buildings and wreak destruction. But few people will swallow either the main plot or its two equally hackneyed sub-plots, one involving a ridiculously caricatured Japanese colonel (played with heavily theatrical over-emphasis by Richard Loo), the other featuring Anthony Quinn under Oriental make-up as a loyalist resistance fighter.
Poor Philip Ahn is caught in the middle of both sub-plots, but even he can do little with his radio-serial lines and weak-kneed characterization. Ellen Drew has the thankless role of the unsympathetic wife, while Ruth Warrick dispenses blank goody-goodiness, and Randolph Scott doctors on doggedly. As for Ducky Louie, Carol Thurston and the rest of the mainly Chinese players, we will pass over their efforts in silence.
By some quirk that is difficult to understand from today's perspective, China Sky was quite successful at the box-office. I would have thought it fell between two stools - too much action for the girls, far too much soppy romance for the boys.
The Director: Known as a reliable work-horse, Ray Enright was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1929 to 1941. Enright commenced freelancing in 1942 with his best-known film The Spoilers, starring John Wayne and Randolph Scott. In fact he seems to have reached his stride with westerns such as Trail Street, Albuquerque, Coroner Creek, South of St Louis, Montana, Kansas Raiders and Flaming Feather.
Poor Philip Ahn is caught in the middle of both sub-plots, but even he can do little with his radio-serial lines and weak-kneed characterization. Ellen Drew has the thankless role of the unsympathetic wife, while Ruth Warrick dispenses blank goody-goodiness, and Randolph Scott doctors on doggedly. As for Ducky Louie, Carol Thurston and the rest of the mainly Chinese players, we will pass over their efforts in silence.
By some quirk that is difficult to understand from today's perspective, China Sky was quite successful at the box-office. I would have thought it fell between two stools - too much action for the girls, far too much soppy romance for the boys.
The Director: Known as a reliable work-horse, Ray Enright was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1929 to 1941. Enright commenced freelancing in 1942 with his best-known film The Spoilers, starring John Wayne and Randolph Scott. In fact he seems to have reached his stride with westerns such as Trail Street, Albuquerque, Coroner Creek, South of St Louis, Montana, Kansas Raiders and Flaming Feather.