Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)

It was hit or miss in 1980 whether I could get into R rated movies as I turned 16 years old. Some movie theaters looked the other way and didn't bother checking your ID. Other movie theaters were more vigilant and turned you away if you weren't 18 years old (unless you were accompanied by a parent or guardian). Somehow, I got into Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING when it was released in the summer of 1980. The other big scary film of 1980 was Sean S. Cunningham's low budget FRIDAY THE 13TH, released by Paramount. I don't recall if my parents put the breaks on my desire to see it like they had with JAWS or ROLLERBALL a few years earlier. Or was the terrifying feedback from my friends who saw the film plus the gory, color photos from FRIDAY THE 13TH in my favorite horror film magazine Fangoria enough to make me sidestep the second most popular slasher film to be released after John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978). Whatever the reason, I never did see FRIDAY THE 13TH in its initial release. 

As I start this review four days away from Friday, September 13th, 2024 (coincidence?), I don't believe I've seen the original theatrical version of FRIDAY THE 13TH. Even with some basic cable channels like Turner Classic Movies now showing more contemporary movies uncut with bad language and nudity, a recent viewing of FRIDAY THE 13TH last year on AMC revealed it was not the definitive, blood-spattered version. A couple of death scenes that I had heard about and had seen the stills in Fangoria did not show the full gory reveal. AMC's version had been edited. I am determined this Halloween to watch the uncut original FRIDAY THE 13TH and explore one of its early sequels FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that first introduced the hockey goalie mask to the seemingly indestructible killer Jason Vorhees (more about him later). 

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) is the grandfather of slasher films. Carpenter's HALLOWEEN would modernize the genre to a new generation of moviegoers. FRIDAY THE 13TH would be the first follow up film to cash in on HALLOWEEN'S success. FRIDAY THE 13TH did a few things right. It smartly moved the horny teenage/college boys and girls from the suburbs to a summer camp in the woods - Camp Crystal Lake to be exact. We all remember those scary campfire ghost stories about the escaped prisoner with a hook for a right hand that had been sighted near the summer camp we all attended.  That urban myth's DNA was embedded in the young movie audience that flocked to see this little horror film that cost $550,000 to make and made $59 million at the box office.  HALLOWEEN implied more violence and gore than it actually showed. FRIDAY THE 13TH took advantage of the burgeoning make up effects and hired up and coming make up effects artist Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD) to create some memorable and gory death scenes. 

With an original screenplay by Victor Miller and directed by Sean S. Cunningham (he produced Wes Craven's 1972 THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), FRIDAY THE 13TH opens up with a flashback to Camp Crystal Lake circa 1958.  A group of camp counselors sing camp songs in a cabin. Two counselors Barry (Willie Adams) and Claudette (Debra S. Hayes) sneak away to have sex. They are both stabbed to death by an unseen assailant. Flash forward to the present. Newly hired camp cook Annie (Robbi Morgan) hitchhikes her way to the soon to be reopened Camp Crystal Lake. When the locals at the diner hear where Annie's going, they refer to it as "Camp Blood". Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), the town derelict warns her the camp is cursed. After catching a ride half way with a kind truck driver (Rex Everhart) to the camp's entrance, Annie is picked up by an unseen driver for the last section. The mysterious driver slashes Annie's throat. 

The rest of the victims, er, I mean counselors arrive at Camp Crystal Lake including Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), his girlfriend Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), the lovable but lonely Ned Rubinstein (Mark Nelson), the extroverted Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and the athletic Bill (Harry Crosby).  They're greeted by owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) whose family originally owned and ran the camp and head counselor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King). Steve heads back into town to pick up supplies. The counselors prepare the camp for the upcoming season. They discover a snake in one of the cabins and kill it with a machete. Ned thinks he sees someone go into a cabin and investigates. Bill powers up the generator. A storm comes over the lake bringing torrential rain. Jack and Marcie duck into a cabin and make love in a lower bunk. In the top bunk above, Ned lies dead with his throat slit. As Jack has a post coital smoke, the killer jabs an arrow up through Jack's throat from under the bunk.  Marcie catches a machete in the skull after taking a shower.

In the main cabin, Brenda, Alice, and Bill play Strip Monopoly. Brenda grows tired and heads back to her cabin. She thinks she hears someone calling for help.  Brenda wanders into the archery range. The lights are turned on, blinding her. Alice and Bill hear a scream. They check the nearby cabins.  They can't find any of the counselors, only a bloody machete. Alice tries to call for help but the phone line has been cut. They try to start one of the cars. The engine won't turn over. Up the road, the owner Steve is dropped off by Sgt. Tierney (Ronn Carroll) after some car trouble. Walking toward camp, Steve runs into someone familiar (off screen) who stabs him.  The killer cuts off the generator to the camp. Bill goes to investigate. When Bill doesn't return, Alice searches for him.  She finds Bill impaled by arrows, pinned to the back of a door. 

Alice is now the Final Girl. She barricades herself in the kitchen.  Brenda's bloody body is thrown through the window.  A jeep arrives at the camp. Alice rushes out, thinking it's Steve. Instead, it's an older woman, Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). She tells Alice she's a former counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. Mrs. Vorhees reveals years ago her son Jason Voorhees drowned in the lake at at the camp. She blames two counselors for fooling around when they should have been on lifeguard duty. His birthday was on Friday the 13th, this very night. Alice realizes Mrs. Voorhees is the killer. Mrs. Voorhees tries to stab Alice. Alice hits her with a fireplace poker.  Alice stumbles across two more of her dead counselors. Alice hides in the pantry.  When Mrs. Voorhees attacks again, Alice knocks her down with a cast iron skillet. Alice thinks she's killed the mad woman and rests by the canoes.  The indestructible Mrs. Voorhees shows up again. In their final struggle, Alice grabs the machete and decapitates Mrs. Voorhees. Alice climbs into a canoe and floats out into the middle of the lake where she falls asleep until the morning when the sheriff arrives. As Alice begins to paddle toward them, the dead and moldy young Jason Voorhees leaps from out of the water and pulls Alice into the water. But it's just a dream as Alice awakens in the hospital, alive but shaken by the traumatic events.

I always had a bias against FRIDAY THE 13TH as a copycat, ripoff slasher film, riding the coattails of HALLOWEEN'S tremendous success. But like a good scary campfire tale, FRIDAY THE 13TH is a decent chiller that copies some of HALLOWEEN'S tropes but distinguishes itself as well. Having the location at a summer camp is its best decision. Rustic cabins surrounded by a thick forest and dark lake just screams for something horrible to happen. Rather than go with a different holiday title like Labor Day or Valentine's Day (MY BLOODY VALENTINE anyone?), the filmmakers chose Friday the 13th, a day associated with bad luck and misfortune. The death scenes are suspenseful, shocking, and surprisingly quick. George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD lingered on Tom Savini's gore effects longer than horror fans were used to.  For FRIDAY THE 13TH, the death scenes are brief. We see a little gore.  Most is left to our imagination. A few murders occur offscreen (most likely budgetary decisions) with their bloody bodies showing up in the finale. Like HALLOWEEN, characters in FRIDAY THE 13TH are killed after having sex while the virginal Final Girl Alice survives.

Another of my silly prejudices against FRIDAY THE 13TH was none of the actors (except Kevin Bacon) went on to have a major film career afterward. HALLOWEEN made Jamie Lee Curtis and P.J. Soles into movie stars. Watching FRIDAY THE 13TH more closely this time, the ensemble cast of new, unknown actors play their young, awkward characters realistically. We're able to distinguish who's who before they start getting picked off. Bacon is the best looking of the bunch so he gets the best looking actress Jeannine Taylor as his girlfriend. Adrienne King as Alice is a strong character who deserves to be the Final Girl, the survivor. And there was one more actor in the counselor group who was from a famous lineage. Harry Crosby who plays the camp painter/fixer upper Bill is the son of actor/crooner Bing Crosby (THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S).  Harry's rewarded with the best death scene as he's found by Alice impaled on a cabin door with arrows, including one protruding through his eye.

The killer in the original FRIDAY THE 13TH is not Jason Voorhees who will be the villain for the rest of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. Instead, it's his mother Mrs. Voorhees, an early Helicopter Mom.  She seeks revenge on a new batch of counselors, blaming them for Jason's drowning back in 1958 due to a couple of camp counselors negligence. Mrs. Voorhees is reminiscent of another overprotective mother, PSYCHO'S Mrs. Bates. Her son Norman took on Mrs.  Bates's overprotective personality (with wig and wardrobe), killing motel guests who either inflame her son sexually or threaten him. Mrs. Voorhees switches to Jason's childish voice at times, talking to herself as Jason similar to Norman mimicking his mother's voice in PSYCHO. FRIDAY THE 13TH would continue a tradition of casting older veteran actors in horror films like Melvyn Douglas in THE CHANGELING (1980), Rory Calhoun in MOTEL HELL (also 1980), Shelly Duvall in her last film role THE FOREST HILLS (2023) or Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in Roger Corman's TALES OF TERROR (1962). Actress Betsy Palmer who plays the murderous Mrs. Voorhees hadn't really appeared in a theatrical feature film since MISTER ROBERTS (1955) and Anthony Mann's THE TIN STAR (1957).  She turned to TV broadcasting for a while. FRIDAY THE 13TH for good or bad, resurrected her film career.

Just like HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH would spawn numerous sequels, one almost every year after 1980, 12 in total. Like the HALLOWEEN sequels, the FRIDAY THE 13TH  sequels never fulfilled the promise of the original. FRIDAY THE 13TH had the summer camp locale, a young Kevin Bacon for a brief time, some good Tom Savini gore make-up effects, and that creepy music that sounded like "Kill, kill, kill, die, die, die." The sequels just seemed to be a retread of the original, hoping to capture that box office lightning in a bottle a second, third, and seventh time. The sequels never brought any fresh take on the original even when the locale was changed to Manhattan or even outer space. However, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (for good or bad) did manage to creatively figure out one dilemma that FRIDAY THE 13TH left them that neither original director Sean S. Cunningham or make up artist Tom Savini supported.

The villain of FRIDAY THE 13TH, the vengeful, psychotic Mrs. Voorhees was dead, her head lopped off by the plucky Alice. Who would take the place of Mrs. Voorhees? In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981), new director Steve Miner and screenwriter Ron Kurz resurrect the seemingly drowned and dead Jason, Mrs. Voorhees son. It turns out Jason didn't drown back in 1958.  He somehow survived and has been living as a hermit in the woods near Camp Crystal Lake all these years (yes, a bit of a stretch), living on squirrels and berries. PART II implies that Jason may have witnessed his mother's decapitation, transforming him into a killer thirsty for revenge on the next group of unsuspecting camp counselors. 

Amy Steel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is set 5 years after the murders at Camp Crystal Lake. A new summer camp is starting up next to the cursed camp (not a good idea but hey, it's horror film logic). PART II spends its first five minutes replaying FRIDY THE 13TH's climax with Alice slicing off Mrs. Voorhees head and Alice's dream sequence (ripped off from Brian DePalma's CARRIE) with dead Jason rising from the depths of the lake to pull Alice underwater from the canoe. The prologue is to remind us who Jason is. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is basically the same story as the original except with a slightly bigger budget (allowing for more attractive counselors this time) and the introduction of the previously believed dead, now living Jason Voorhees. Adrienne King as the survivor Alice and Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph briefly reprise their roles from FRIDAY THE 13TH for PART II. Jason makes sure their appearances are only cameos. Betsy Palmer even returns as Mrs. Voorhees in a flashback sequence as Ginny (Amy Steel) pretends to channel Jason's mother to keep him from slaughtering her.

Just as FRIDAY THE 13TH kept Mrs. Voorhees hidden until the film's finale, PART II does the same with Jason early on besides showing an occasional arm or boot before he kills. As the body count grows, the filmmakers begin to show more of Jason minus his face. Jason finally throws on a burlap sack with holes cut out for his eyes. Jason's a big man, probably in his early 30s, and bald. We still don't know what his face looks like. FRIDAY THE 13TH hinted in the dream sequence that Jason was possibly disfigured or a almost Elephant Man like (it was a dream however). In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II, Jason's burlap sack hood is ripped off, revealing a disfigured or burned face (it's not entirely clear). HALLOWEEN made sure its killer was recognizable once he began his rampage. Slasher Michael Myers wears a William Shatner Captain Kirk Halloween mask he stole from a hardware store. The FRIDAY THE 13TH filmmakers now have their new franchise killer but they don't have an iconic look for Jason. The burlap sack hood is not going to fly.  That will change with a random decision by director Steve Miner in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that will solidify Jason Voorhees in the pantheon of cinema killers.

Of the first three FRIDAY films, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III is the weakest of the three. Like PART II, PART III opens with a recap of the finale of PART II replaying PART II's best moment as Ginny stumbles across Jason's shack and discovers the altar to his dead mother complete with her severed rotting head. PART III takes place the day after PART II. A group of friends led by Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel) take her van to spend a weekend at her parents lake house known as Higgins Haven which just happens to be next door to Camp Crystal Lake. The friends include the couple who will have sex and be slaughtered  Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) and Debbie (Tracie Savage); the comic relief Shelly (Larry Zerner); nice girl Vera Sanchez (Catherine Parks), and stoner hippie couple Chuck (David Katims) and Chili (Rachel Howard). Waiting for them at the lake house is Chris's old flame Rick (Paul Kratka). Naturally, they're unaware that eight counselors have just been murdered at the camp  next door. Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) will wander over from his carnage in PART II and proceed to dispatch each character in a variety of grisly ways (pitchfork, spear gun, machete, axe) until only Chris and Jason are left to face off in a battle to the death (or another sequel).

What's wrong with FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III? Plenty. Since it's the 3rd FRIDAY THE 13TH film, the filmmakers (or some VP of Marketing for Paramount) decided to film it in 3-D. In the film, we're subjected to numerous gratuitous objects pointed right into the camera (and if you're not watching it in 3-D, it's annoying). Because the 3-D technology and experts were in Southern California, PART III was filmed in the Los Angeles area even though the story takes place on the East Coast.  FRIDAY THE 13TH was filmed in New Jersey and PART II in Connecticut, more authentic rustic camp locations. Screenwriters Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson's dialogue is terrible (especially at the beginning). PART III even resorts to ripping of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH in a couple of scenes.  Tracie Savage's Debbie has drops of blood fall on her from above before her death similar to Kevin Bacon's Jack in the first film. And like Adrienne King's Alice in the original, Dana Trammel's Chris stumbles into a canoe after killing Jason and paddles into the lake where this time not the young dead Jason but the dead Mrs. Voorhees springs from the water and pulls her under (only for Chris to awake from her dream). Look for thinly veiled homages to PSYCHO (a shower scene) and THE SHINING (an axe breaking down a door scene). 

Dana Trammel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III

Fortunately for FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III it will be remembered as the first in the series where Jason dons a hockey mask, a modified Detroit Red Wings to be exact. The film's 3-D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff is credited with having the mask on set and director Steve Miner liked it. Larry Zerner's Shelly actually wears it first as a scuba mask when he comes out of the water and scares Vera. Jason dons the mask later after dispatching Shelly and his hockey mask cinema legacy was born. Former trapeze artist Richard Brooker would play Jason and be the first to get screen billing on the opening credits as Jason. PART III would lose Jason's hillbilly clothes from PART II and opt for a more modern jeans and lumberjack shirt look. PART III does have an interesting backstory on why Chris has trepidations about going back to her parents house. A flashback sequence reveals two years earlier she had encountered Jason in the woods and managed to escape an attack by him. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III even spoofs itself. Jokester Shelly fakes his own death early in the film with a fake hatchet in the head and blood, scaring his friends.  It's a funny/scary moment that hints at things to come. When Shelly does get his throat slit by Jason later in the film, his friends don't believe him. 

No one will ever confuse the first three FRIDAY THE 13TH films with the first three THE GODFATHER or STAR WARS films.  But I have to give credit to the original FRIDAY THE 13TH with taking the same basic elements from HALLOWEEN and giving its tale a different location, back story, and killer to separate it from all the other slasher films to follow like PROM NIGHT (1980), TERROR TRAIN (1980), and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981). When director/producer Michael Bay rebooted FRIDAY THE 13TH in 2009 with a bigger budget and effects, his production still couldn't top the original for scares or originality. The original FRIDAY THE 13TH turned out not to be bad luck for the filmmakers, the cast and crew, and Paramount Pictures. To my surprise, this little low budget film that I ignored when I was a teenager and a fan of horror films, deserves to be ranked right behind HALLOWEEN as a classic chiller. 

Shanghai Express (1932)

In the male dominated film world, we often tend to focus on famous and frequent collaborations between male actors and male directors. Collaborations like John Ford and John Wayne (14 films). John Huston and Humphrey Bogart (6 films). David Lean and Alec Guinness (6 films).  Martin Scorsese with Robert DeNiro (10 films) and Leonardo DiCaprio (6 films). Or Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford (7 films). One of the more famous collaborations occurred during the dawn of talking pictures. This collaboration was between a male director and a female actress.  It was Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich.

Sternberg and Dietrich would make seven films together including THE BLUE ANGEL (1930), MOROCCO (1930), BLONDE VENUS (1932), and most famously SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932). Sternberg discovered Dietrich performing in a German cabaret show and transformed her into a movie star (they also became lovers). Complicating matters is that Dietrich would have love affairs with many of her leading men including Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou (MOROCCO) and James Stewart (DESTRY RIDES AGAIN). Sternberg and Dietrich's professional and private relationship would come to an end after THE SCARLETT EMPRESS (1934). Dietrich's star was brightest in the 1930s yet her career continued successfully all the way to the early 1960s. Dietrich would collaborate with many other great directors including Billy Wilder (A FOREIGN AFFAIR, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION), Alfred Hitchcock (STAGE FRIGHT), Fritz Lang (RANCHO NOTORIOUS), and Orson Welles (TOUCH OF EVIL). Sternberg's career would suffer without his muse Dietrich. Nonetheless, Sternberg directed (or co-directed) some interesting projects including CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1935), he directed reshoots for King Vidor's DUEL IN THE SUN (1944), and he directed most of the Asian themed film noir MACAO (1952) starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell (Sternberg was fired by producer Howard Hughes and reshoots were done by Nicholas Ray, Robert Stevenson, and actor Mel Ferrer).

With a screenplay by Howard Hawks favorite screenwriter Jules Furthman (THE BIG SLEEP, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT) based on the short story Sky Over China by Harry Hervey and directed by Josef von Sternberg, SHANGHAI EXPRESS begins not in Shanghai but the Peiping (aka Peking), China train station in the midst of a civil war. We meet all the key players as they board the train to Shanghai: American gambler Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette), dog loving, boardinghouse owner Mrs. Haggerty (Louise Closser Hale), missionary Reverend Carmichael (Lawrence Grant), French Officer Major Lenard (Emile Chautard), German businessman Eric Baum (Gustav von Seyffertiz), the mysterious Eurasian Henry Chang (Warner Oland), British Officer Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey (Clive Brook), exotic Chinese "coaster" aka prostitute Hui Fei (Anna May Wong), and the infamous and beautiful black veiled Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) aka "the Notorious White Flower of  China", another lady of the evening. 

The Shanghai Express departs Peiping. During a delay in transit to clear the tracks of cows and chickens, Doc and Lily run into each other. Shanghai Lily (Doc knew her as Madeline) was Doc's old flame until he broke up with her five years earlier. Doc is taken aback that she has turned to prostitution since their breakup. Doc tells Lily "I wish you could tell me there'd been no other men." Lily replies "I wish I could Doc, but five years in China is a long time." At the next stop, the Shanghai Express is stopped and searched by the Chinese army. Passports are inspected. The Chinese army take into custody a suspected rebel spy named Li Fung (Minoru Nishida). While passengers reembark onto the train, a shadowy figure sends a teletype message to the revolutionaries that Fung has been captured.  The Shanghai Express must be delayed at the next stop in Te-Shan.

Doc and Lily catch up on their lives. Lily notices Doc still has the watch she gave him. Doc admits he has not found love since their breakup. A telegram arrives for Lily from a client, possibly a lover. She tears it up in front of Doc. The Shanghai Express pulls into the next village where the rebels wait in the shadows. Gunfire erupts and the Chinese soldiers sitting atop the train cars are mowed down by machine gun. The passengers are forced to disembark again. The rebels bring each passenger to a room to be questioned. Waiting to interrogate each of them is the enigmatic Henry Chang, leader of the revolutionary forces fighting the Chinese army. Chang's looking for a hostage to trade for his right-hand man man Fung. Chang tortures the German Baum for making derogatory remarks toward the Chinese. When Doc tells Chang he's headed to Shanghai to perform an important surgery, Chang decides to make Doc his hostage. The warlord sends a message to the British Embassy in Shanghai to arrange to have Fung brought to him in exchange for Captain "Doc" Harvey. 

Chang questions Lily next and offers to take her to his palace. Chang grabs Lily who rejects his advances. Held in a room next door, Doc overhears the rebel leader and bursts through the door, punching Chang. In retaliation, Fung has Hui Fei brought to him and rapes her (off screen). With negotiations complete, a train with British diplomats and the spy Fung depart to rendezvous with Chang. Hui Fei contemplates suicide by knife for what Chang did to her. Lily steps in and stops her. Chang's jealous and angry with Doc for striking him and plots to blind Doc before releasing him. Lily offers to go to Chang's palace in exchange for Doc's safety. The train arrives. British diplomat Mr. Albright (Claude King) hands over Fung. Chang reluctantly releases Doc.  Doc notices that Lily's luggage has been taken off the train. Chang reveals that Lily will be staying with him. While the foreign passengers prepare to board the train to Shanghai, Hui Fei emerges from the shadows and stabs Chang to death.  Doc retrieves Lily and the train pushes off from the platform. The Shanghai Express finally reaches Shanghai. Doc catches Lily trying to buy another watch for him. He asks Lily for a second chance.  They kiss passionately. 

Part of the fun in watching SHANGHAI EXPRESS is that most of the passengers on the train have a secret. The character with the biggest secret (and one that's revealed early in the film) turns out to be Mr. Chang who's the leader of the rebels fighting the Chinese army. German businessman Baum's secret is he trades in the illegal drug opium not coal as he tells Chang. Baum reveals his secret under intense interrogation by Chang and he's branded for insulting Chang. Under scrutiny by Chang, it's revealed Major Lenard has not been in the French army for a long time even though he still wears a uniform. A dishonorable discharge perhaps. Mrs. Haggerty tries to sneak her dog into first class. A porter catches her and the dog is placed in the cargo section. During the rebel takeover of the train, Mrs. Haggerty will retrieve her prized pooch. When Doc Harvey runs into his old flame Madeline, he's not aware that she's the infamous "Shanghai Lily." Lily will reveal her secret to Doc early in the journey, providing the rest of SHANGHAI EXPRESS for the two former lovers to reconcile during the turmoil. Chinese prostitute Hui Fei will nearly kill herself over her rape by Chang. Lily will suspect her secret when she stops Fei from plunging a knife into her heart. Fei will have her revenge. 

The arc of Shanghai Lily in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is a joy to watch. She begins the adventure a "fallen woman", a courtesan providing her services to rich men up and down the Chinese coast. Her life seems romantically empty. When she bumps into her old beau Doc Harvey on the Shanghai Express, she gets a second chance to win back her true and only love (Lily had tried to make Doc jealous five years earlier to test his love for her. Doc left her over the stunt). Lily's hopes (and eyebrows) raise when she notices Doc still wears the watch she bought him (with her photo inside). She stands up to Chang who makes overtures toward her until Doc busts through the adjacent door and protects her virtue by decking Chang. Lily will return the favor (unbeknownst to Doc) by offering to depart with Chang to his jungle fortress if he will not burn Doc's eyes out for insulting Chang. By the film's end, Lily and Doc are ready to give love another try. They were always meant for each other. 

The females Lily and Hui Fei are the most heroic characters in SHANGHAI EXPRESS (with Doc Harvey the one heroic male figure). When Lily learns that Chang plans on maiming Doc for humiliating the warlord before turning him back over to the British and Chinese authorities, Lily's willing to sacrifice herself to Chang for Doc's safety. Lily with Reverend Carmichael's recommendation even turns to prayer to save his love. "I think you're right, if God is still on speaking terms with me," she tells the Reverend. Fei will risk her life by seeking vengeance on Chang. Fei's actions not only free herself physically and emotionally from the sexual predator Chang, it provides the impetus for the remaining characters to safely board the train and continue on to Shanghai.

From the moment Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily lifts the black veil from her face as she boards the Shanghai Express, you can see why her leading men, her director, and audiences fell head over heels in love with the Teutonic beauty. Although Director of Photography Lee Garmes won an Academy Award for Cinematography for SHANGHAI EXPRESS, Dietrich claimed in her autobiography that Director Sternberg and not Garmes did most of the camerawork. Whichever man was involved, the deep soft focus and black and white photography on Dietrich is gorgeous (Madonna would recreate one of Dietrich's poses in her music video Vogue). SHANGHAI EXPRESS's visuals are German Expressionistic. Light and shadow, smoke, steam, shots through door slats and translucent curtains dazzle the eye.  Sternberg incorporates a couple of long tracking shots at the beginning, signaling SHANGHAI will not be a static film. Sternberg uses sound to great effect too. In SHANGHAI EXPRESS'S most suspenseful sequence as Fei kills Chang and Doc searches for Lily amongst the chaos, Sternberg shuns music and uses the train's bell like a metronome, each toll a warning for the passengers to get back on the train and depart before the rebels regroup after the death of their leader.

Upon first viewing, Clive Brook who plays Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey seems too upper stiff lip and British to have been Shanghai Lily's lover.  Watch it again and Brook grows on you.  Doc still loves Lily intensely upon their reconnection.  Doc internalizes his feelings for Lily for most of SHANGHAI EXPRESS until he overhears Chang making unwelcome advances toward her. Doc's crashing through the door and punching Chang is one of the highlights of the film (to be followed by Hui Fei's revenge on Chang). SHANGHAI EXPRESS'S surprise is watching Doc and Lily fall in love again. Lily had become a fallen angel after she broke up with Doc. She offers to forfeit her freedom to have Doc released from Chang's clutches. Doc stands up for Lily's honor twice: once when Reverend Carmichael tries to put down Lily for her profession and later punching Chang to protect Lily's honor. Brook mostly worked in Great Britain during his film career and may have played the first talking Sherlock Holmes in William K. Howard's SHERLOCK HOLMES (1932). 

Anna May Wong who plays the exotic prostitute Hui Fei is recognized as one of the first Chinese-American film stars in cinema. Hui Fei's relationship to Shanghai Lily is as mysterious as Fei herself.  They are both "coasters" i.e. prostitutes. Is Fei a contemporary of Lily, a protege, or possibly even a lover? It might just be a coincidence they're on the same train. There's an unspoken bond between the two women. Lily knows what Chang did to Fei and stops her from killing herself. Fei's shame and rage will bring her to kill Chang, allowing Doc, Lily, and the rest of the passengers to escape on the "Express" back to Shanghai. Wong would face racism throughout her career where "Asian" roles she was clearly perfect for went to better known Caucasian actresses like Myrna Loy. Wong's performance in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is her best. Other films to catch Wong in include Lloyd Corrigan's DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON (1931) with SHANGHAI co-star Warner Oland and Arthur Lubin's film noir IMPACT (1949). 

Besides Dietrich, the second most recognizable face in SHANGHAI EXPRESS is Warner Oland who plays the diabolical rebel leader Henry Chang. Oland would rise to greater fame as Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan in a series of Charlie Chan mysteries for Fox in the 1930s including CHARLIE CHAN IN SHANGHAI (1935). For SHANGHAI EXPRESS, Oland plays a darker character than the affable Chan. At the start of the film, Chang has an international air to him that quickly morphs into a xenophobic, misogynistic coldness when he's revealed to be the leader of the bandits. Chang's disdain for the western world (except for Shanghai Lily) is palatable. Horror fans will remember Oland as the botanist who bites and turns Henry Hull into a werewolf in Stuart Walker's WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935). Ironically, even though Oland played numerous Asian characters throughout his brief career ( he died in 1938 from pneumonia) he was of Swedish descent with no known Asian origins. 

Providing the comedy relief for SHANGHAI EXPRESS is one of my favorite characters actors, the bullfrog voiced Eugene Pallette as American gambler Sam Salt. Salt wants to bet on every single thing that happens in SHANGHAI EXPRESS. Salt's secret? The diamonds he wears are fake. He tells Mrs. Haggerty the real ones are in a Shanghai hotel safe. But is Salt real or a fraud?  We're never sure.  Other great Pallette performances include as Friar Tuck in Michael Curtiz's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1937) and as Mr. Pike in Preston Sturges THE LADY EVE (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.

There's something about the word "express" in a movie that conjures up locomotive intrigue, adventure, movement, and possibly even murder. Just the title SHANGHAI EXPRESS caught my attention immediately. Hollywood has been intrigued by "express" as well, providing the title for many different films.  Film noir director Jacques Tourneur (OUT OF THE PAST) made BERLIN EXPRESS (1948) starring Merle Oberon and Robert Ryan involved in a Nazi assassination plot on a train Post World War II. Mark Robson's VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965) takes place in Italy during  World War II. A group of British and American POWs led by Frank Sinatra flee ala THE GREAT ESCAPE from their German captors on a hijacked locomotive. One of the most famous trains in the world is the Paris to Istanbul Orient Express, the setting for Agatha Christie's murder mystery whodunit novel made into two star studded motion pictures. The original MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974) was directed by Sidney Lumet and the more recent 2017 version directed by Kenneth Branagh who also plays Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. 

Mark Robson's final film (he died during post production) would be another "express" adventure film called AVALANCHE EXPRESS (1979) starring Lee Marvin, Robert Shaw (who also died before the film was released), and football great Joe Namath (yes that Joe Namath). Instead of Nazis in Robson's BERLIN EXPRESS, AVALANCHE EXPRESS'S plot involves a CIA agent smuggling out a KGB defector on the Atlantic Express (but avalanches are involved). SHANGHAI EXPRESS was so good and successful that Hollywood remade it not once but two times. The first remake Ralph Murphy's NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUNGKING (1943) starring Robert Preston, Ellen Drew, and Otto Kruger reimagines the plot on both a bus and later a plane traveling from China to India.  The more authentic remake would come eight years later in William Dieterle's PEKING EXPRESS (1951) starring Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet, and Edmund Gwenn (MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET) about a group of refugees fleeing Communist China who are attacked by outlaws on a train. Neither remakes leading lady would come close to Dietrich's performance.

Some final SHANGHAI EXPRESS tidbits. A thousand Chinese extras were used to provide the film's foreign atmosphere. The language heard in the film is Cantonese. Director Sternberg would later make MACAO with numerous Asian extras and 2nd Unit footage shot by a cameraman of the Chinese island of Macao. SHANGHAI EXPRESS was made Pre-Code meaning that the film could get away Dietrich and Wong portraying prostitutes and the pre and post implications of Chang's rape of Fei. If SHANGHAI had been made a year later, Dietrich and Wong's characters would have been changed to dancers or cabaret singers. When the 1986 adventure/romance film SHANGHAI SURPRISE came out with on and off screen couple Sean Penn and Madonna at the time, I assumed it was a remake of SHANGHAI EXPRESS even though I hadn't seen either film. Never assume. Although a period film set in 1938 Shanghai, SHANGHAI SURPRISE has nothing to do with SHANGHAI EXPRESS except for the word "Shanghai". Madonna plays not a prostitute but a missionary. 

SHANGHAI EXPRESS would pave the way for more movies about a group of different people thrown into some kind of crisis.  Movies like Alfred Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (1938), John Ford's STAGECOACH (1939), Robert Aldrich's THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965), and Ronald Neame's THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) all owe a debt of gratitude to SHANGHAI EXPRESS. SHANGHAI EXPRESS is director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich at their best, taking us to an alluring part of the world during a tumultuous time in China's history with a love story as fascinating as the events and episodes that occur in the film.