User Reviews

This a pêrfect anti red feature that we could expect from stories of this period. There were so many of them. But this is a fairly good drama that gets your whole attention, especially near the end. maybe a little overacting from actors, but we are used of this in this show. Acceptable ending, not too smooth nor corny.

Obviously an anti-Communist story, "North of Shanghai" is melodrama that does not age gracefully. Instead of being campy it suffers from both the casting and quite heavy-handed approach.

It's set in 1949, as the Communists are approaching victory, and concerns a missionary family. Thomas Mitchell well-cast as a doctor with his wife Dorothy Peterson, tending to the locals' physical and spiritual needs. His adversary is General Chu, played in Razzie-award-worthy incompetence by an unrecognizable Robert H. Harris as if he had been hired to star in a no-budget Charlie Chan picture.

The Commies' bombers are flying over the church that Mitchell runs along with his hospital, and their rumble is causing its ceiling to crack and crumble. A highlight of the show is when plaster chunks from the ceiling fall, almost hitting the actors during this live broadcast.

The melodrama is laid on very thick, with plot twists built around Mitchell operating on General Chu's wife while the general is plotting to get rid of Mitchell and all Westerners from the city, after paratroopers land and he takes over. The movie's climax is quite well staged, and its subsequent outpouring of religiosity just the ticket to make this a favorite of America's 2023 newly-minted Speaker of the House: Representative Whatshisname.