Cinema: Nothing Sacred

Satan Never Sleeps (20th Century-Fox). God, in Director Leo McCarey's movies, is always good-especially for business. McCarey's most famous religious pictures (Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's) were shrewdly aimed to please the millions of Roman Catholic moviegoers, and they managed to charm plenty of Protestants too. In this picture, after a run of unsuccessful shows, McCarey has once more called upon religion to perform a commercial miracle; but this time he appears to have used the Lord's name in vain. For all its superficial smirk of piety, McCarey's Satan is just a prurient, soft-soap-and-holy-water version of the spicy story about the lonely missionary and the beautiful native girl.

The missionary is William Holden, a priest who arrives in China just before the Communists take over. The beautiful native girl is France Nuyen, who is rescued by the padre from a flood. 'I love you!" she sighs, and flings her arms around him. Hot under his clerical collar, the priest squeaks: "Stop tantalizing me!" She sneaks into his room at night. "Father," she coos, "don't you need anything?" Pulling the covers over his chest, he wheezes in terror: "Get out!" Pretty soon she has him ogling her while a Mass is being read.

Since this is a commercial movie the affair cannot go much further. To end it without ending the erotic suspense, McCarey employs the old Notre Dame system: send in the second team. While the priest sits with his hands tied, a Communist colonel rapes the girl, gets her with child. But how can this appalling situation possibly produce a happy ending? Leave it to McCarey. When the girl gives birth to his son, the colonel suffers an incredible conversion to Christianity and decides to marry her. This is an example of McCarey's "warm, human touch." The colonel, it turns out, isn't really a nasty Red rapist after all, see? He's a nice Christian rapist.