Blood on the Sun/James Cagney on Film

Starring:James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney, Porter Hall, John Emery, Robert Armstrong, Wallace Ford, Rosemary DeCamp, John Halloran, Leonard Strong, James Bell, Marvin Miller, Rhys Williams, Frank Puglia, Billy Wayne, Joseph Kim, Emmett Vogan, Gregory Gaye, George Paris, Oy Chan, Sam Harris (II)
Director: Frank Lloyd
Studio: Delta
Product Type: DVD

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Cagney is a crusading newspaper editor in 1930s Japan who's come into possession of the "Tanaka Plan" for world domination. Amidst political intrigue and crossed loyalties, Cagney must now find a way to warn the outside world. A fine, entertaining melodrama that's based in fact, with Cagney as good as ever, but this time with judo chops. If only the Japanese knew some kind of hand-to-hand combat, they might be able to stand a chance against Cagney. Dated only by its condescension towards the Japanese, Blood on the Sun never slacks its pace, providing quick-witted patter all along in the mark of the classic Hollywood style. It seems peculiarly American (in an inadvertent way, of course) that in the film's final moments the day should be saved by none other than Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont). --Jim Gay

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Blood on the Sun
Starring: James Cagney , Sylvia Sidney , Porter Hall , John Emery , and Robert Armstrong
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Peter Pan
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: 6305010579
Release Date: 1998-05-29

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Cagney is a crusading newspaper editor in 1930s Japan who's come into possession of the "Tanaka Plan" for world domination. Amidst political intrigue and crossed loyalties, Cagney must now find a way to warn the outside world. A fine, entertaining melodrama that's based in fact, with Cagney as good as ever, but this time with judo chops. If only the Japanese knew some kind of hand-to-hand combat, they might be able to stand a chance against Cagney. Dated only by its condescension toward the Japanese, Blood on the Sun never slacks its pace, providing quick-witted patter all along in the mark of the classic Hollywood style. It seems peculiarly American (in an inadvertent way, of course) that in the film's final moments the day should be saved by none other than Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont). Curiously, this is one DVD from Master Movies that does not contain optional Japanese subtitles. It does, however, have copious bios of the stars and filmmakers, and a crystal-clear picture. --Jim Gay

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Blood on the Sun/Time of Your Life
Starring: James Cagney
Manufacturer: Pop Flix
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B000FWHVHI
Release Date: 2006-07-11

The James Cagney Collection: The Time of Your Life/Blood on the Sun/Something to Sing About

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The James Cagney Collection: The Time of Your Life/Blood on the Sun/Something to Sing About
Starring: James Cagney , William Bendix , Wayne Morris , Jeanne Cagney , and Broderick Crawford
Director: H.C. Potter , Victor Schertzinger , and Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: ROAN
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ASIN: 6305436460
Release Date: 1999-10-26

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Blood on the Sun/James Cagney on Film
Starring: James Cagney , Sylvia Sidney , Porter Hall , John Emery , and Robert Armstrong
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B00003CWI6
Release Date: 1999-11-23

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Description

Newspaper editor Nick Condon prints a controversial story. Japanese authorities demand a retraction, but Condon refuses and is then framed for a murder he is trying to investigate. Includes a documentary, James Cagney: On Film, an introduction by Tony Curtis and the original theatrical trailer for Cagney's The Roaring Twenties. Menus: English • Spanish • Chinese Subtitles: Spanish • Chinese

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Blood on the Sun
Starring: James Cagney , Sylvia Sidney , Porter Hall , John Emery , and Robert Armstrong
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00009NH9S
Release Date: 2003-07-22

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Blood on the Sun
Starring: James Cagney , Sylvia Sidney , Porter Hall , John Emery , and Robert Armstrong
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00004ZEL4
Release Date: 2001-07-03

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Blood on the Sun/The Time of Your Life/Great Guy

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Blood on the Sun/The Time of Your Life/Great Guy
Starring: James Cagney
Manufacturer: Platinum Disc
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ASIN: B0002S64FU
Release Date: 2004-08-17

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Blood On The Sun
Starring: Philip Ahn , Robert Armstrong , Hugh Beaumont , James Bell , and James Cagney
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Miracle Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B0002DOX8U
Release Date: 2004-09-28

Product Description

Nick Condon (Cagney) is a newspaper reporter working in Tokyo, who refuses to toe the Japanese line on the expansionist policies of the anti-democratic imperialist government. When it becomes clear to the authorities that he will not cooperate, and that he has valuable information and contacts, they decide to capture and incarcerate him.

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Maybe You Have to Live It to Appreciate It
Post WW2 anti-Japanese flick
America will be crushed, never to rise again
Cagney Elevates Formulaic 'Yellow Peril' Film
Genuine Cagney

Blood on the Sun
Starring: James Cagney , Sylvia Sidney , Porter Hall , John Emery , and Robert Armstrong
Director: Frank Lloyd
Manufacturer: Madacy Records
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 6305248044
Release Date: 1998-12-22

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Customer Reviews:

Maybe You Have to Live It to Appreciate It.......2005-06-01

In "Blood on the Sun," James Cagney plays an expat newspaper editor who discovers Japan's plot for world domination. Made in 1945, the film is a bully piece of wartime propaganda--but it also has surprising depth. It isn't PC, but it's not all stereotype either. There are some real Asians in the film, the plot is a true story, and not all the Japanese are evil. That said, yes, there are a lot of quasi-offensive squinty-eyed caucasians with fake buck teeth in the film, too.

Cagney does a very good job as the editor. A bundle of self-assured energy, as ever, he nonetheless adds depth by trying to speak a bit of Japanese and Mandarin, and by doing some very credible judo. Matter of fact, his judo coach was LAPD's Jack Halloran, who also took a role in this flick and went on to become a regular Hollywood character actor!

The movie is filmed almost entirely in sets at the studio, which is unsurprising. Nevertheless, it looks fairly good. In fact, the "expat bar" set is a faithful reproduction of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed bar at the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo!

Cagney was just coming off an Oscar and just out of contract with WB Studios. Here, he and his brother produced, and they did a decent job. In short, the films hold up. Not a major classic, but an exciting potboiler! And as a correction to various reviewers, the film takes place neither in "post-WWII Japan" nor "The 1920's" but in the 30's.

As a personal aside, I served many years as a US diplomat in Communist China--another ruthless east Asian dictatorship. Maybe some other viewers will find the Japanese officials in Blood on the Sun to be too fake, smarmy, and banal. I found them pretty realistic!

Post WW2 anti-Japanese flick.......2005-03-10

The pugnacious James Cagney stars in this very heavily propagandized 1945 flick "Blood on the Sun". Cagney plays Nick Condon the feisty and successful newspaper editor of the Tokyo Chronicle in the 1930's. Cagney receives a document spelling out the militaristic intentions of Japan formulated by Baron Tanaka. The plan calls for the conquering of China as the initial step towards world domination.

When Cagney's top reporter and wife are murdered by the Japanese secret police, he realizes his own life is in danger. With the aid of the exotic looking Sylvia Sidney, playing a Eurasian Chinese sympathizer and double agent, he endeavors to deliver the document to the American embassy in Japan.

The movie amateurishly portrayed the Japanese, who were heavily made up Caucasians, stereotypically as nearsighted, bespectacled, bucktoothed yellow demons. I suppose the world climate at the time demanded this type of treatment to our hated enemies by Hollywood. It was a bit too thick for me however

America will be crushed, never to rise again.......2004-05-14

Based on a true story, BLOOD ON THE SUN is an entertaining little stewpot of a movie.
James Cagney plays Nick Condon, managing editor of the Tokyo Chronicle. It's 1920-something and the United States and Japan share an uneasy peace. That peace threatens to be broken violently when the "Tanaka Plan," a Japanese government document outlining a blueprint for world domination, falls into Condon's possession. Condon has to get the document out of Japan and announce its contents to the world, the Japanese have to stop him.
When I first saw BLOOD ON THE SUN I shrugged it off as a piece of late-war propaganda. There ARE a lot of stereotypical portrayals and attitudes coursing through this one- the Japanese are portrayed for the most part as buck toothed, diabolical schemers. Cagney is attacked from behind twice in this movie. The officials present trumped up charges in their attempt to stop his muck-raking ways. The outrageousness of a foreign correspondent stealing and threatening to publish a secret state paper seems lost on this movie. Then I did a computer search of "Tanaka Memorial" and had a chance to read the document in question. If it's not a forgery (the Japanese government claimed it was), it dwarfs the movie's presumptions. As a side note, the web site I visited informs us that the Chinese, and not a crusading American editor, originally released the document.
As usual, Cagney is a bundle of energy and is great fun to watch. I've read that he took judo classes in preparation for this part, and it seems he's doing a lot of his own stunt work. Sylvia Sydney plays Iris Hilliard, Cagney's love interest and someone interested in the document as well. Soon after her character is introduced we learn she is half-Chinese, which should alert us to the fact that she isn't quite as sinister as she appears. The Chinese were our allies during to the war. They were the good Asians. Another fun character in this one is Capt. Oshima (John Halloran), one of many Caucasian actors partially hidden behind false teeth and taped eyelids. Oshima is a menacing, murderous, towering brute of a cop. Symbolically he's the first to attack the American Cagney with a karate chop from behind, a blow that knocks Cagney out. Later, when the gloves are off and the two square off against each other in a fair fight the results are decidedly different.
Wiard Ihnen & A. Roland Fields won a little statuette for Best Art Direction for their work on BLOOD ON THE SUN. The sets do look pretty good.
BLOOD ON THE SUN is in the public domain, so anyone can copy and sell it. If you get the Delta version be warned that their logo will appear periodically in the lower-right hand corner. They've included a short documentary (still photos with a voice over narration- yawn) and an intro and outro by Tony Curtis. Unforgivably, Curtis tells us in the intro that Cagney plays a newspaperman "right after World War Two." It may seem a minor point, but couldn't somebody on the set have reminded him that the movie took place after World War One?

Cagney Elevates Formulaic 'Yellow Peril' Film.......2003-10-30

By 1945, the war in the Pacific was rapidly drawing to a close, and one would think that Hollywood would have presented a then contemporary view of America's relation with Japan. Surprisingly enough, director Frank LLoyd harkens back to a pre-Pearl Harbor take on Japanese, which is to say that as far as Orientals were concerned, Charley Chan was mainstream America's image of the Asian. It took the events of 12/7 to awaken America to a newer, more lethal yellow peril. What is remarkable about LLoyd's BLOOD ON THE SUN is that nearly every one of the Asian characters is played by an American wearing some really bad makeup. Since political correctness was non-existant then, no one seemed to mind the incongruous accents and eye makeup. Into this mess of a national antipathy towards anything Japanese comes James Cagney, a Tokyo-based American news editor who somehow comes into possession of a secret Japanese document that outlines nothing less than a domination of the world by the Japanese emperor. The plot revolves around efforts by the Japanese to regain custody of this document before Cagney has a chance to publicize it. From a purely dramatic point of view, the interest of the film lies less in the race for possession of the document and more in a not so subtle expose of what passed for an anger towards all things Japanese. Most of the Japanese were of the buck-toothed, slanty-eyed, grinning widely school of acting. The only true oriental who radiated any genuine emotion was the Chinese veteran character actor Philip Ahn, who has made a career of playing rogues and coolies with an impressive depth of dignity. Here Ahn has a bit part as a sadistic Kampetai (Japanese secret police) official who nevertheless gives a chilling performance as a officer who exudes menace with each soft-spoken word. Most of the action revolves around Cagney who must navigate his way through a series of political roadblocks put there by those who may or may not be on his side. Sylvia Sidney is a half-oriental woman with whom Cagney has an unlikely romance and is on screen mostly to give Cagney something to do when he is not being pursued by the local cops. Early on, a hulking Japanese officer suggests that he would like a Judo match with Cagney. Such subtle foreshadowing sets up a climactic grappling bout that is far more realistic than what is found in most chop-socky kung fu films. The ending, of course, is sheer nonsense and bears as much resemblance to real world intrigue as, say, this movie. Still, BLOOD ON THE SUN has its charm as long as one can plow through mounds of cinematic and ethnic implausibilities.

Genuine Cagney.......2003-09-13

If you're a Cagney fan (especially a female one) I think you'll love this film. Cagney lays down some classic lines and is invloved in a number of romantic moments which will make the ladies swoon (well, I did anyway). Despite the fact that this is one of his later films, Cagney still bring to the film a certain sexiness and assertiveness that I have come to love him for. Not to mention that he gets to throw a few punches! If you are truly a diehard Cagney fan, this is a must see.

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