Tonight's Movie: Road to Singapore (1940) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

During my teen years I saw three of the first four Crosby-Hope "Road" movies on local commercial television, but I never had the opportunity to complete viewing the seven-film series.

Over the years the movies have been available in various groupings via DVD, but now Kino Lorber has boxed all seven films in one appealing Blu-ray set, "On the Road With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby."

When I saw the Road films years ago, I came away somewhat confused by the almost plotless movies, while entertained watching Hope, Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour having a good time hanging out together.

That feeling was very much the same when I just revisited the first film in the series, ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940) for the first time in a great many years. There's not much to it, yet I enjoyed the film's company.

The meandering plot finds Josh Mallon (Crosby), heir to a shipping company, avoiding his grandfather (Charles Coburn), the family business, and his pretty yet pushy fiancee (Judith Barrett).

Josh takes off and ends up in Singapore along with his pal Ace (Hope). In no time at all Josh and Ace are disconcerted, while not exactly displeased, when Mima (Lamour) moves in with them and starts keeping house. The beautiful Mima is on the run from her mean partner (Anthony Quinn) with whom she's been performing a wild dance/whip act in a dive bar.

Will Josh go back home to face the music, so to speak? Will Mima fall in love with Josh or Ace? Stay tuned.

There are some nicely amusing bits, and I'll make the obligatory mention that some viewers may have trouble with humor outdated by contemporary standards, including a type of blackface in one sequence.

That said, it's all innocent fun, and a movie like this must have been welcome for audiences anxious over the war then being fought in Europe and what it might mean for the future.

While filled with plenty of giddy moments, ROAD TO SINGAPORE has some dramatic heft as well. Quinn is properly scary as an abusive man, and there's a fair among of angst over the romantic angles near movie's end.

The plot of this 85-minute film isn't exactly sizzling, but it's pleasant, and I'd say it's worth seeing even if only for the memorable moment of Lamour getting out of bed late one night to sing the mesmerizing "The Moon and the Willow Tree." That one scene had me completely sold on Lamour and the movie.

Interestingly enough, the song was cowritten by the film's director, Victor Scherzinger, who also composed Hope and Crosby's "Captain Custard." Both songs were cowritten with Johnny Burke.

ROAD TO SINGAPORE was filmed in black and white by William C. Mellor.

The film looks very good on this Blu-ray release. I did note that sound levels were curiously low; I had my TV turned up twice as high as normal just to achieve a reasonable volume.

Fairly minimal extras consist of the ROAD TO SINGAPORE trailer and three additional "Road" movie trailers; a sing-along song; and a short featurette on Bob Hope and the USO which previously appeared on DVD releases.

The disc has captions for the hearing impaired, which has become standard for Kino Lorber releases in recent years; I only mention it as two of the films in the set, ROAD TO RIO (1947) and ROAD TO BALI (1952), will not have subtitles, while all of the other films will.

Please follow along the "Road" with me as I watch the remaining six films in this set in the weeks to come!

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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