Escape to Burma

In the Burmese jungle temple, some of the apes are chimpanzees, which only live in Africa.

This adventure movie produced by RKO , Radio Picture Inc , deals with a man on the run for a killing he did not commit and he finds refuge and romance in an isolated jungle mansion . As a local prince in British Burma has been murdered , apparently by his prospecting colleague called Jim Brecan (Robert Ryan) .

"He's made love to you, hasn't he?" snarls policeman Cardigan to teak plantation owner Gwen Martin.

From an objective film perspective, this is a good piece of moviemaking from several different angles.Firstly, it is a visually striking work of technicolor, the cinematographer John Alton (An American in Paris) does some really great work here.

The BBC aired this recently and as it was directed by super veteran Allan Dwan I happened to tape it.Ryan plays the typical US macho hero of the fifties, a fightin',shootin'(a Luger no less!

My word, what a lot of old tosh this is. Barbara Stanwyck, languishing deep in the Burmese jungles with just a bunch of superstitious natives and a herd of old elephants for company, finds herself playing hostess to a fugitive Robert Ryan.

Direction, acting and virtually everything else about this mid-fifties pulp action flick are too flat to make it more than mildly enjoyable in a camp way. Ryan and Farrar fare better than Stanwyck, whose performance here unintentionally verges on self-parody.

Homer Dickens in his book, "The Films of Barbara Stanwyck," suggests this is one of the low points in Stanwyck's film career but it's entertaining in a Saturday-matinée sort of way and has --considering its low budget -- colorful and exotic backgrounds. (True, these backgrounds have the look of studio sets but that only adds to an air of calculated escapism.

It is one of the cliches of mainstream Hollywood cinema that the desire of the hero is limited to two options - a good girl (marriage, security, family, society), and a bad girl (lust, transgression). In this scenario, women are barely people at all, more embodiments of Law and Desire, the socially acceptable and unacceptable.

Barbara Stawyck, Robert Ryan, and David Farrar star in "Escape to Burma," an escapist over-the-top adventure. We open in court and the king is throwing his weight around, telling David Farrar to find Robert Ryan, who has been identified as the one who shot the prince.