Promotion and Critical Reception
The film was promoted by the appearance of Wayne on the number-one rated television show I Love Lucy. In an unusual two-episode arc airing as the show's season opener on October 10, 1955, Lucy and Ethel steal Wayne's footprints from the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater the night before the premiere of Blood Alley, and complications ensue. At one point early in the episode, a studio employee interrupts Wayne's "rubdown" by showing him a poster for Blood Alley.
Despite the star power of its lead actors and director, Blood Alley received a lukewarm reception from critics. The New York Times proclaimed, "Blood Alley, despite its exotic, oriental setting, is a standard chase melodrama patterned on a familiar blueprint." Today's critics have focused on Blood Alley's anti-communist aspect, website sover.net calling it "only a banal actioner" and DVDtalk proclaiming it "preposterous but entertaining" and claiming that "Wayne and Bacall have no chemistry at all".
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