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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 10. August 6, 1958

Film Review — Hongkong's Humble Buts its home

Film Review

Hongkong's Humble Buts its home

Two weeks ago, one of the local shipping firms received a curious letter, ineptly wrought in crayon on both sides of the paper, which was of the coarse yellow variety commonly used in primary schools.

The frequent erasures and interlineations attested the care put into its composition, and thumbprints here and there indicated that although there were five per hand, the writer was human. He (the writer) offered himself to the Merchant Marine as a China-Seas-pirate exterminator, and in a postscript pungent with cunning, stipulated payment at the end of each voyage in hundred-dollar bills.

He made veiled hints at an international repute as adventurer and plucky devil-may-care, mentioning such names as Sargasso Halley and Yang-Tse Dave, scourge of the Cinque Ports. Naturally, he omitted to add that the scourge was more in the nature of a fungoid plague than of a militant sea-sweeper, but his crayon had by then worn down to an edible nubbin, and, anyway, the impulse was trivial.

After the Mental Hygiene Dept., who traced the letter, had routed me out of the foc's'le built on the roof, flogged my cap-gun and grenades, and confined me below decks I began to churn out this small panegyric. Even now, after a day's freedom, I find it difficult to type with a cutlass between my teeth, and, besides, the safety pins holding my eyes slantwise keep slipping.

In case the narrative seems to be getting lost, I must make it clear that the traumatic body-blow which sent me jigging to the E.U.P. Cantonese was "China Seas", starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. An old film but torrid. For five minutes after it all the exit music was drowned by the sound of escaping steam rushing from my ears in a series of shrill arpeggios, so you can see I was, uh, audibly affected.

Ostensibly, the story was of a visceral rough-and-tumble set in the China Sea, involving a plundered bullion ship, European drifters in cahoots with the pirates and ultimate destruction of the Chinamen by the Captain, Clark Gable. Harlow was the Captain's vis-a-vis, a trollopy blonde who called him "toots" to the accompaniment of Pawnee ritual howls from me. My tongue charred with indignation when Gable passed up this panting wench for a modest English woman, who, I am sure, would have fed the pirate chief on Lane's Emulsion if left alone with him.

Of course, Harlow, stricken with grief, an incurable eastern disease, goes on a blind with Wallace Beery in the saloon, plays bottles with him and drinks him under the binnacle. She finds by accident that he is in league with the baddies, but just to wound Gable, gets Beery the armoury key and supplies guns to the Chinese pirates on board who are disguised as German spies, nuns, Unesco lecturers and so on. At this juncture I was down to my Liberty bodice but the tension still had places to go.

Now the true purpose of the film was revealed—we were in for a treat of sadism. A hurricane was brewing up and all that could be heard was the steady drip as I salivated onto the seat in front. Then all the insensate fury of the summer monsoon burst on the ship and with it the most exquisite scene that has ever laid me prone.

As the ship rolled and pitched, a huge steam tractor made of iron broke its chains and went rumbling around the deck. Now a few dozen Chinese were also on the deck in peculiar wooden crates, and as they cowered or fled the tractor ran them down. Slowed by age, one slippered pantaloon was crushed by a rear wheel and crushed again as the tractor rolled back the other way.

I was squatting four feet from the screen by this time, gibbering quotations from Popular Mechanics, and I bayed when the pirates finally swarmed over the gun'ls. To whet the palate they shot a few children and broke the legs of the third Mate, a kindly septuagenarian. Then they grabbed Gable and asked where the bullion was. He said nothing. They asked him again. Nothing. Out came a charming contrivance called the boot. Two pieces of boot-shaped wood fitted snugly over the foot, about two inches apart, and were screwed together if the victim proved reluctant. I took wings at the sight of this and hovered over the stalls chanting and sprinkling incense while they put the pressure on poor Clark. How the boot creaked. How slowly the worn handle turned and how Gable's eyes resembled grapes as his metartarsals splintered and shrank.

However, he didn't squeal, so, concluding that there was no bullion, the pirates left. Jean Harlow, wearing a satin dress with nothing on underneath, had been drenched by a wave and sat in the saloon breathing deeply. I sat in the front row breathing deeply.

Suddenly the shattered third Mate, in an excess of heroism, jumped into the sampan alongside hugging a grenade and everything exploded. Unable to stand any more I brushed my eyeballs from my vest and rushed out shrieking. Except for the visit by the Mental Hygiene Dept. I have stayed in my foc's'le ever since, relaying orders to the engine room and fashioning a crude wooden contrivance which I think I shall call the boot. I shall use it on modest Englishwomen who get in the way of blinds with nothing on under their dresses.

The gold, incidentally, was in the toolbox of the tractor.

D. B. Halley.

"Love is at first a pompous disguise for the sex-instinct, later an apology for its absence."

—Brian Bell.