China Gate (1957 film)

China Gate is a 1957 Hollywood Cinemascope war film written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller and released through 20th Century Fox.

Plot

Sergeant Brock (Gene Barry) and Goldie (Nat King Cole) are American Korean War veterans now serving as French Foreign Legion mercenaries in the First Indochina War. Angie Dickinson plays a "half caste" Chinese Eurasian named "Lucky Legs" who resorts to smuggling to feed her five-year-old son she had with Brock. Brock abandoned her and the child when it was born with Asian features, feeling a "half breed" would not be welcome in America; an attitude towards miscegenation prevalent at the time. Lucky is recruited by the French high command to use her knowledge to guide a demolition squad of Legionnaires led by Brock to blow up a hidden Viet Minh ammunition dump on the border with Red China. In return for her services, Lucky is promised by the French that they will arrange for her son's evacuation to America.

The patrol is filled with animosity between the former lovers, booby traps, and Viet Minh patrols. On arrival at the ammunition dump hidden in a mountain, Dickinson discovers the commanding officer is a former friend Major Cham (Lee Van Cleef) who wants to take her and her son to a new life in Moscow. Van Cleef plays his role as a high flyer corporate executive (in the manner of Fuller's gangsters in Underworld USA) marked for great things in the world of international communism. The sabotage...
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