Though the title recalls an earlier Josef von Sternberg classic - Shanghai Express, made at the height of his and Marlene Dietrich's collaborative fame - this melodrama conjures up a different universe altogether. A spoilt rich girl using the alias of Poppy Smith - Gene Tierney at her loveliest - enters a Shanghai casino and is seduced by its " incredibly evil" atmosphere, unaware that her entrepreneur dad (Walter Huston) is intent on closing down the iniquitous establishment, domain of the glacial "Mother" Gin Sling (Ona Munson in a series of lacquered, Medusa-like wigs). Sternberg was forced to sanitise his adaptation of John Colton's stage play, but his vision suggestively offers more than the salacious detail he was forced to cut from the script. The film's masterful use of musical rhythms, stylised dialogue and close-ups makes it a high point among films from the studio age. And her face a mask revealing more than it conceals - the bitterness of lost illusion - Munson creates one of cinema's most sympathetic monsters.

A gambling queen uses blackmail to stop a British financier from closing her Chinese clip joint.