Passport to China (1961)

Original title

Visa to Canton

Directed by

Michael Carreras

Genre

adventure film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 15m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 14 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A pilot takes on a mission to get a woman out of China. The story follows his attempts and the tricky situations he faces.

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What happens

Passport to China (released in the U.K. as Visa to Canton) is a 1960 British adventure spy film released by Columbia Pictures; directed by Michael Carreras and starring Richard Basehart, Lisa Gastoni, Eric Pohlmann and Bernard Cribbins. The screenplay, which concerns a pilot who tries to rescue a woman from China, was based on a story by Gordon Wellesley and made by Swallow Productions and Hammer Films. It was made as a pilot for a planned BBC TV series, but ended up being released as a theatrical feature instead after Hammer's earlier Tales of Frankenstein TV pilot fared so poorly in the US. Bernard Robinson was production designer, Thomas Goswell and Don Mingaye were the art directors, Roy Ashton did makeup, and Dominic Fulford and Arthur Mann were the assistant directors. Filming went on from 9 June until 1 July 1960. It was trade shown on 20 November 1960, and released in the UK (in Technicolor) on 26 December 1960. It was theatrically released in the US only in black-and-white in February 1961. Hammer historian Tom Johnson remarked that it did not have "the feel" of a Hammer production in general. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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