Geisha Girl 
                                 
Director: George Breakston
Year: 1952
Rating: 4.5
Directors George Breakston and C. Ray Stahl followed up Oriental Evil with another low-grade film that was also shot in Tokyo. They brought poor Martha Heyer aboard again because of her marriage to Stahl. I can't imagine she looked back on these two films with favor but she did get to spend time in Tokyo back in 1952 when it was still being occupied by the GI'Is. There is more outside location shooting this time and the film has a flavor of culture. There is a nightclub performance that lasts about ten minutes, a Geisha song and a Kabuki play. All welcome because anything not related to the film is a good thing. It is really quite awful.

 

Two G.I.s who were in Korea are on their way home with a stopover in Tokyo. Rocky (Steve Forest in his debut) tries to make hay with an airline hostess Peggy (Heyer) but she tells him she will be busy. Busy because she is an undercover agent. Once in Tokyo, Rocky and his friend Archie (Archer MacDonald, who plays the film like a poor man's Jerry Lewis) try going into clubs but they are all off-limits to soldiers. They buy some civilian duds to change into and without realizing it have stumbled on the headquarters of a plot to take over the world. Tetsu (Tetsu Nakamura) has invented some pills that can blow up a city and the pills end up by accidently in the pocket of Archie. Tetsu invites them to his home where he runs a Geisha school. An ambitious guy - both a plan to take over the world and a Geisha school. Peggy shows up as does a hypnotist who can hypnotize people through walls. By this time the film has sunk lower than a Catfish Hunter slider. Still, I credit the directors for filming this in Tokyo and having the three performances to pad out the film. The Kabuki one in which the boys end up on stage in front of an audience of hundreds was amazing for a film that must have been shot on a prayer.