Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Hoof it to the Far East… and Beyond!
DIRECTED BY NORMAN PANAMA/1962
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: JANUARY 9, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS
It’s been an unspoken norm in comedy that stealing material is to be expected. With that being the case, then perhaps by extension, it’s okay for me to steal an opening line for this review of the 1962 Bob Hope/Bing Crosby comedy film, The Road to Hong Kong. Here goes…
“Bing and Bob’s one more for the Road finds the boys approaching their seventh decade and belatedly chasing spies, rocket formula, and Joan Collins in this Shepperton Studios-shot independent production distributed by United Artists and helmed by Road to Utopia (1945) scribes Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.”
Aside from the obvious fact that that’s too little too late in this piece to actually be an opening line, it nevertheless gets a good bit of pesky facts-transmission out of the way. So, thanks to ZekeFilm cohort Justin Mory for that fine passage, as I’ve unsurreptitiously snatched it from his March 21, 2023 Letterboxd review of the film.
The Road to Hong Kong does an even more unsurreptitious snatch, recreating the feeding machine sequence from Modern Times wherein Charlie Chaplin is famous force fed by a cumbersome contraption intended to speed up productivity in the workplace. This time, while any of Chaplin’s cultural satirical barbs are jettisoned, it ups the ante with two guys getting food shoved in their faces rather than just one. It’s almost surreal watching Hope and Crosby getting force-fed banana and sprayed with milk. Not only did the filmmakers find a way to make this elaborate bit far more revolting than Chaplin’s version, there’s also a grossly weird homoerotic innuendo about it. In these films and in this moviemaking time period (the early 1960s), it’s hard to say whether that is intentional or not. It’s an extended sequence that’s cringe-inducing in more ways than one.
Did I mention that the above sequence occurs in outer space? No kidding… Not only do the fellas make their way to the titular Hong Kong, from there, they are forced to man a rocket to the moon. Maybe “The Road to the Cosmos” would’ve been a more fitting title? As it is, The Road to Hong Kong immediately stands out from its six predecessors in the series in that it’s the only one with “The” at the beginning of the title. It’s also the only “Road to” film not released by Paramount (it’s a product of something called “Melnor Films”, a one-off outfit named after director Norman Panama and producer Melvin Frank).
Numerous gag/joke rehashings of, and meta references to the previous “Road to” movies abound, starting with the opening tap dance number. With this final outing being a good ten years removed from the previous most recent release (1952’s Road to Bali), the retrospective approach isn’t at all inappropriate. What is inappropriate, to the point where it maybe ought to go without saying, is the glut of ethnically targeted and dialect comedy.
The road gets particularly rough with this sort thing… mentions of things like “bamboo television antennas” and the referencing of short shrifted series mainstay Dorothy Lamour in the opening titles as “Our very special cup of tea” are but mild infractions. Later though, the inevitable hee-hi-ho-larious yellow facing dress-up of Hope and Crosby takes things up several notches. But even in the later date of 1962, audiences and performers felt quite okay about it. (At least, the Caucasian domestic audience). In 2024, this is an old comedy film with even older stars traveling the globe to exotic locales and goofing on them. Dare I posit, whadaya expect??
Even with this film downgraded to ho-hum monochrome following Road to Bali’s burst into living color, it does have a terrific animated title sequence by Maurice Binder, the great visual artist who went on to create the memorable opening sequences of sixteen James Bond movies. That, though, is not the only similarity this British-based production has with the then-upcoming 007 films. Perhaps most out front is the presence of a very Cold War era evil organization known as “The 3rd Echelon” (run by an imposing Robert Morley). Filmmaker/historian Michael Schlesinger and archivist/historian Stan Taffel cover even more such surprising connections on their recently recorded and rather entertaining audio commentary for this KL Studio Classics release.
Even more out front is starlet Joan Collins as Diana, a 3rd Echelon Agent who turns out to have a weakness for wacky fast talking sixty-year-old entertainers. The established dynamic of Bing getting the girl while Bob gets the cold shoulder is alive and well in The Road to Hong Kong, even as it’s painfully obvious that Collins is thirty years their junior. The fellas’ level of close-to-the-edge sex jokes and overt lustiness is enough to net them a one-way trip to Horny Jail. Instead, the bad guys keep trying to trap them into a one-way trip to space. Because the space race is on, donchaknow.
All that said, in its age of withering kooky satire at the cinema, The Road to Hong Kong actually lands quite well… all things considered. The plot is as paper-thin and ramshackle as ever, but again, whaddaya expect?? Bing makes Bob memorize the all-important scientific formula that everyone is after, so he doesn’t have to do it, telling him that he’s “a slope-nosed Univac!” He’s got “a brain like a sponge, and a face to match!” Bing hilariously treats Bob like chopped liver, but in real life, it’s their former gal pal co-star Dorothy Lamour who is most marginalized. Lamour (apparently after much negotiation and a nice payout) turns up only at the end for a fun musical sequence where she gets to pull the boys’ fat out of the fire. Sarong jokes abound.
It’s nice to finally have The Road to Hong Kong on Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics. Thus, the series is now format complete, with matching spine packaging to boot. The transfer looks nicer than some of the earlier entries, as well. In fact, the image is now so sharp that we can see the hidden wires of the visual effects gags. But then, if any movie is set to be spoiled in that regard, it’s this one, as Bob & Bing more than once break the fourth wall to ask favors of The Road to Hong Kong special effects department. In other scenes, however, both leads appear clammy with sweat. We can really see that, too.
For a series of comedies that pass themselves off as travel-based but in reality, never shoot anywhere near their films’ namesakes, is it any wonder that by movie number seven, they’re also copping material? At least the main source of comedy theft is their previous “Road to…” movies. As for blatant uses of and reuses of stock shots (is that repeated submarine shot actually from a Karel Zeman movie…?) that kind of thing is to be expected in a lower-budgeted effort such as this. Whatever the case, all is forgiven on The Road to Hong Kong. It may be no one’s favorite cup of tea, but it’s still got that ol’ flavor fans are looking for.