Blood Alley: John Wayne's Inner Struggle
What you see to your left is a picture of John Wayne slapping a Chinawoman's ass. He'd just got done mocking her lack of proficiency in English and barking out an order. The slap to the ass may very well have been a display of big brotherliness. Or maybe he was just telling her to hurry up. Or maybe, him being locked up for two years had something to do with it.
Yeah, let's explore that one a minute. Here's the prologue: John Wayne is the captain. His tugboat is nabbed by the Chinese Communists and (presumably) impounded. He's put into solitary. . . in a poorly-guarded, dilapidated manor for two years. During that time, John Wayne is contacted from the outside by a local underground of counter-revolutionaries. An escape is discretely organized, and one day John Wayne is busted out.
During his confinement, he constructed an imaginary friend to get him through it, as they say. He named her “Baby.” She was his co-conspirator, his benefactor, his “grip.” woquinoncoin expressed some surprise at the suggestion that Wayne deliver all his “Baby” lines to his right hand. Admittedly, the thought of John Wayne masturbating is amusing.
But it also raises two important points.
The first is that the thought of John Wayne, in a six gallon hat with a gold star pinned to his matching vest, sitting on a toilet, pretending to shoot the viewer with his left index finger as he masturbates is actually funny. . . it's so much more than amusing.
The second, and more relevant, point is that John Wayne created a goddess. Through isolation and sexual deprivation, he dreamed up the All Purpose Female. The only thing he does better than her is exist.
It is hard for John Wayne to adjust to life outside of his cell. Once sprung, he's taken to the village elders, who explain that he is to pilot an old steamship through the “Straits of Formosa,” (that is, "Blood Alley") to Hong Kong, so the villagers and their descendants may live without Communist rule. Ha ha.
His love interest is some frigid blond. He gets real bitchy with her, shakes her up a bit, slaps her around a little. It's almost as if Baby is lashing out against her more embodied competition. It's his right hand he uses to grab her by the arm, and clout her in the head, and throw her against the wall. It is Baby manifesting her will through the appendage Wayne most thoroughly (and intimately) associates with her.
His relationship with his love interest is the battleground on which Wayne's Baby takes her final stand. Baby is killed off when Wayne finally, after two years, kisses another woman. This happens when they putt into British Territory and are recognized as refugees.
Anyway, if you are prone to confining yourself to a room, continually masturbating while chatting it up with your invisible girl or boyfriend, and waiting for a message from the outside, then this movie is for you.