DVD Review: Bombs Over Burma (1942, AKA The Devil’s Sister).

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Produced by Arthur Alexander & Alfred Stern
Screenplay by Joseph H. Lewis & George Wellington Pardy
Story by Milton Raison
Cinematography: Robert E. Cline
Edited by Charles Henkel Jr.
Music by Lee Zahler

Cast: Anna May Wong (Lin Ying), Noel Madison (Me-Hoi), Leslie Denison (Sir Roger Howe), Nedrick Young (Slim Jenkins), Dan Seymour (Pete Brogranza), Frank Lackteen (Hallam), Teala Loring (Lucy Dell), Dennis Moore (Tom Whitley), Connie Leon (Ma Sing)

---

Several years ago, I kinda went nuts over Joseph H. Lewis — one of the best of the B movie directors, spurred on as much by his 50-plus episodes of The Rifleman as by films like Gun Crazy (1950), The Big Combo (1955) and A Lawless Street (1955). And I’m ecstatic that Film Masters has given us a decent-looking DVD of Bombs Over Burma (1942).

With the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States’ entry into World War II, as you’d expect, war was on everybody’s minds. It’d been going on for a while, but now it was here. As with most big topical stories, Hollywood saw potential in the war — and they got right on it. One of the first was PRC with Bombs Over Burma (1942), which went from announcement to theaters in just a couple of months.

Anna May Wong is a Chinese school teacher/secret agent who tackles a spy ring (lead by a traitorous English diplomat working with the Germans) that’s sabotaging the construction of the vital Burma Road.

Miss Wong is always fascinating to watch; there’s just something about her (she’s incredible in Sternberg’s Shanghai Express). She’s especially effective in the early scenes when a young boy is killed in a raid, and it’s cool to see her have a real lead for a change.

This being a Poverty Row war movie, you wouldn’t expect a lot of battle scenes, but they’re here — patched together from stock footage and really impressive editing (Lewis started out as an editor). Of course, this being a Joseph H. Lewis picture, you can expect a strong visual sense — even in a rush job like this (I doubt the shoot ran any more than a week).

Lewis’ visuals (like his habit of placing things in the foreground to add depth) is what makes this DVD from Film Masters such a nice thing to have. Chances are, Bombs Over Burma never really looked all that good. But this is the best transfer, by far, that I’ve ever seen.

Film Masters has done a lot for this film, removing dirt, stabilizing the picture and God knows what else —without giving it that weird, waxy, pixel-y look that comes from too much restoration knob-twiddling. For what was almost certainly a 16mm print, the detail is quite good and the contrast levels are fine.

They didn’t have as much luck with the sound, but that’s the fault of the material. PRC pictures almost always had muddy sound — at least they did by the time the 16mm prints and the VHS tapes and DVDs made from them came along. I’m sure the fine folks at Film Masters did what they could with what they had.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of cheap little movies like this that look just awful when you can find a copy of them to watch. I’m so thankful that Film Masters is going to the trouble to fix some of ’em up — and I recommend this one, especially to fans of the ever-inventive Joseph H. Lewis.