Wild Eastern

7 Women. "The bandit Tunga Khan won't dare to molest us--we're American citizens," says a frail missionary lady, reeling off exposition at a godforsaken outpost in northern China in the year 1935. Of course, most of the dreadful events thus predicted duly come to pass, and all that remains to arouse sympathy is the plight of some rather interesting actresses, trapped on MGM's chintzy Chinese sound stage with absurd situations, hoked-up direction and dialogue like wet firecrackers.

Noted for such memorable westerns as Stagecoach, Veteran Director John Ford apparently believes that the trick of making an eastern is to change the road signs and trade his Indians for Mongolian invaders. The white man's burden falls, while he lasts, to Eddie Albert as an expectant father who berates himself just before the bandit attack with: "What kind of man was I, to get my wife pregnant at a time like this?" As the wife, Betty Field runs the risk of menopausal pregnancy, while the other girls crank up enough trauma for several melodramas. Mission Leader Margaret Leighton is a sexually repressed religious nut with lesbian leanings toward Teacher Sue Lyon. Anne Bancroft (in a role vacated by Patricia Neal when she suffered a stroke) plays a tough mission doctor who drinks, smokes, tells truths that hurt, and ultimately saves everyone else by giving herself in concubinage to the lustful Khan (Mike Mazurki). Flora Robson, Anna Lee and Mildred Dunnock view her sacrifice with tolerance, lining up against Margaret to plug the thesis that in moments of stress a hard-headed broad may be more blessed than a God-fearing prude. It's worth a second thought but hardly a whole movie.

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