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The Wong Man
Topic Started: Oct 11 2007, 05:55 AM (1,889 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Mr. Wong, Detective (1938, dir. William Nigh)

Yes, in our exclusive In The Balcony retrospective of the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series, we're up to the summer of 1938. Charlie is still on hiaitus; Warner Oland died on August 6. Mr. Moto's Gamble (conceived as a Chan picture) was released in April, and Mr. Moto Takes a Chance in June. Monogram Pictures stepped in with their own Asian detective series; this first enstallment was released in early October, only a few weeks before the next Moto film. William Nigh directed, and Boris Karloff, Grant Withers, and Evelyn Brent starred. Here's what I said in 2007 when I first watched this thing. Stay tuned after for an update...

Watching this film, released 7 years after Frankenstein, one is apt to shake one's head and say, "Boris, what th' hell HAPPENED?!?"

The 1930s had been a fruitful decade for Karloff, personally and professionally, and he appeared in one classic horror film after another: his resume following his first stint as Mary Shelley's monster included The Old Dark House, Mask of Fu Manchu, The Mummy, The Black Cat, Bride of Frankenstein, The Black Room, The Raven, and a quartet of admittedly minor but still quite satisfying near-classics, The Ghoul, The Invisible Ray, The Walking Dead, and The Man who Lived Again. All within five years, and this list does not include many other interesting features graced by his presence during that period. By 1936, however, Universal had decided to forego horror films, lucrative though they may be: they just weren't worth the bad press and besides, England had all but banned them outright. Boris picked up work with Warners and Fox and made a trip home to England for a film, but when Poverty Row came calling in the person of Monogram Pictures, Karloff listened to their offer. It seems that they were intent on competing with the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films over at Fox, and had optioned the rights to Hugh Wiley's Mr. Wong mystery stories, which had run in Collier's magazine. Karloff had played Asians from time to time in his career (notably in MGM's Mask of Fu Manchu) and after all, it was steady work... so he took it, and a six-picture deal was struck.

Mr. Wong, Detective
was the first of the bunch, and it's deadly dull. Chemical manufacturer John Hamilton seeks Wong's help because he's been receiving threatening messages, and sure enough, he's found dead the next day. Other deaths follow, and the cast does its best to look interested long enough for Mr. Wong to figure out what, who, and how. Lucien Prival, so hilariously unsatisfactory as the would-be Emperor of the World in the serial Darkest Africa two years earlier, is equally ineffective here as a gangster.

The movie makes little sense, and even as these types of pictures go, it's a bad one, with imponderable clues and inadvertent laughs (Karloff picks up a tiny shard of glass from the floor and says, "Very brittle glass. Must've been made by a Bavarian"). Later, he tells a suspect, "Now you have, no doubt, experimented as we all have with vibrations of sound." Boris doesn't exactly sleepwalk through the role, but neither does he distinguish himself. After this, though, he was back at Universal for a little something called Son of Frankenstein, which led to a nice multi-picture deal with Columbia for a series of worthwhile "mad scientist" pictures, and then Karloff could drive off of Poverty Row. In a limo. Monogram gave him a going-away present, though: after five interminable Mr. Wong pictures, the studio decided the last film on his contract should be a horror picture. Keye Luke was handed the lead in the last of the Mr. Wong series, and Boris was saddled with The Ape, the stupidest and worst movie he'd ever make.


Okay, we're back in 2012. Comfy?

Oddly enough, I have two sets of these things (the six Wong pictures), one from Roan Group and one from VCI. They're both good-looking prints. The VCI looks better, but a tad scrubbed.

As for the film itself, well... It's a Monogram, and nobody was going to mistake it for a Fox film. All of the scenes are set in a room. And I don't mean, oh, a huge library where you can see out the double doors and into the foyer with a big winding staircase in the background. No, I mean... a room. And when they leave that room, they step into... another room. I am pretty sure that every single scene in the picture takes place in a room except for a brief taxicab sequence, which is clearly shot on a soundstage anyway. Ah, Monogram. House of Rooms.

Karloff? Well, well... Look, let's get serious here. We probably all know Japanese people and Chinese people. Or we're familiar with the basic type, right? Think about it. Warner Oland is no more Chinese than you are, and Peter Lorre, bless 'im, is a little foreign type but Japanese? The first Moto film at least gave him some semblance of Japanese makeup (well, an attempt at it, anyway) but the guy would be spotted relatively quickly at a convention of Japanese men, let us say. I guess what I'm trying to stress (dang, I wish Mr. Hale were here, he's so succinct and terse with this stuff) is that these guys are about as close to the nationalities they're portraying as Hollywood is to Tokyo or Shanghai. But Mr. Karloff, with his stupid makeup and giant silk robes, is worse. He makes no effort to do anything other than not show emotion (a Chinese trait, it seems) beyond simple joy at things like a teacup or the identification of a murderer. He uses his usual, lisping voice (I can't even imagine what a Karloff-doing-a-Chinese-accent would sound like). And the script is beyond silly (Mr. Wong surmises from his shred of Bavarian glass that somebody killed John Hamilton by leaving a globe full of poison glass in his office for him to break and die from; but whom? Whom?). Mostly, though, after watching Fox with their Egyptian street sets and cut-ins of Big Ben and large manor houses full of suspects, I come away from this film and their one-room setups after one-room setups appreciating the Chan and Moto series more. Or appreciating Monogram less. Or both.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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rodney
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I seriously can't stomach these movies. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
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Frank Hale
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I find the Wongs pretty harmless, even if most of the actors appear to be under sedation. At least they’re a reminder that, no matter how bad you think Monogram was, PRC was a lot worse.
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Laughing Gravy
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The Mystery of Mr. Wong (1939, dir. William Nigh)

Oh, brother.

(Yeah, I may well start all six Mr. Wong reviews with those two words.)

An old friend of Wong's has received a death threat, and not only that, but he's gotten his mitts on the fabled "Eye of the Daughter of the Moon", largest sapphire in the world. Not only THAT, but he's accused his wife of having an affair with her lover, PLUS there's a Russian prince living in the house under a false identity, and he's threatened with being revealed, and... jesus, there are, what, 8 different mystery movie plots here? What, the Monogram people couldn't make up their mind which one to go with? Sheesh.

This is the one where the guy gets killed during a game of charades in which he plays a murder victim. Well, THERE'S typecasting for you. Grant Withers is once again the puzzled police detective; Dorothy Lee, Craig Reynolds, and Holmes Herbert are all around, too.

The Chinese servant speaks very poor English, but in the several scenes he and Mr. Wong have together, they never switch to Chinese to communicate. Hmmmm.

For what it's worth, probably a little better than Mr. Wong, Detective, but that's like picking which shirt in the hamper is least wrinkled.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Mr. Wong in Chinatown (1939, dir. William Nigh)

If you ever find yourself displaced in time and back in the summer of 1939, you would have your choice of new films with Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, or Mr. Wong. Pick one of the others.

Good opening: A beautiful Chinese lady shows up at Mr. Wong's house, but he's not home, so she begins scrawling a note to him when somebody shoots her with a poisoned dart through the window. Turns out she's a princess who has been in America buying armaments to help China against the Japanese invaders. Interestingly, the killer doesn't turn out to be Japanese. I mean, it's not surprising: there are no Japanese people in the film.

Karloff, interpreting a dwarf who speaks no English, as the li'l guy just stands there waving his arms: "A car was waiting in the alley! A large black car!"

Dramatic exchange:

"Are you accusing me of the murder of the Princess?"
"Yes. And the maid. And the dwarf."

I guess Mr. Wong movies are fun if you're in the right mood. I just haven't found the right mood yet. And by the way, "Chinatown"? We get a shot of Coit Tower in the opening credits, but everything is shot in the same interior rooms as every other Monogram Picture. They could've called this "Mr. Wong in Shanghai" or "Mr. Wong in Akron" and not changed a thing.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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Think this one was recycled as a Charlie Chan; recall the dwarf -- more a toddler, actually -- being led by the hand everywhere almost like a chimp. Creepy.
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mort bakaprevski
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THE CHINESE RING (1947)
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Laughing Gravy
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The Fatal Hour (1940)

The absolute worst, and I mean of ALL the detective films, Chan, Moto, Holmes, and now Wong, series I've been watching. Painful, painful, painful to make it all the way through. I deserve a medal.

Somebody has killed Grant Withers' cop pal ("Dead policemen are bad medicine"), and Withers spends 1 hour and 8 minutes screaming at everybody in the cast. Karloff shuffles along, some other people get killed, there's some nonsense about smuggling at the riverfront (quickly forgotten) and a radio that works by remote control (the remote is the size of a card table).

Enough to turn me off of Monogram, of detective movies, of William Nigh, of life itself. Worst of the worst. I hated it.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Laughing Gravy
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Doomed to Die (1940)

Yeah, I watched it. The fifth and final of the Karloff Wong pictures (he was pulled off the sixth one to make The Ape instead). A luxury liner has burned at sea, and then the head of the steamship company is found murdered. Revenge, or is somebody profiting from the death? Tris Coffin is the insurance guy, Marjorie Reynolds and Grant Withers are back (they may have filmed all five of these things in the same week), and nobody else in the cast would interest you. Way less terrible than The Fatal Hour, which doesn't mean it's any good.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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Come on, Mr. Gravy . . . Just one more Mr. Wong. One thin, tiny little movie more . . . (John Cleese runs and jumps behind something)
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Laughing Gravy
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Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

Well, with star Boris Karloff and director William Nigh pulled away to make The Ape, Monogram pretty much slapped this thing together. Keye Luke, billed above the title for probably the only time in his illustrious career, takes over the lead as Jimmy Wong; this may well be a prequel to the other five films, because he's introduced to grumpy detective Grant Withers, who has no idea who the guy is. Phil Rosen directs, and this may well be the best of the six Wong films, and believe you me, I am well aware that I just set a new low (or high) in the "damn with faint praise" department.

A famous professor returns from Mongolia with some surprisingly dull 16mm footage of his trip, with which he gives a lecture to what seems to be a random group of people. He tells them they found the tomb of Genghis Khan, but neglects to mention he found a scroll within that points the way to a fortune in oil. Well, he stops long enough to chug a glass of water, and boy does HE drop dead. Jimmy Wong, late to the lecture, and the dead guy's pretty Chinese secretary will try and hash everything out, but all you really need to know is that the co-pilot of the exposition, who vanished mysteriously in the Chinese desert, ain't dead a'tall.

Hey, it's 61 minutes long, it's the last of the Wong pictures, and... well, any movie at all that DOESN'T have Boris Karloff playing a Chinese guy is okay by me.

"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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mort bakaprevski
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Also includes the gorgeous Lotus Long.... who wasn't Chinese at all (Japanese & Hawaiian). Thought she was hot stuff when I was a kid. Still do.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Frank Hale
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Speaking of Karloff as Chinese, I caught "West of Shanghai" from the Archive a few weeks ago and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Boris is a warlord this time, but it's directed by John Farrow and is as much comedy as melodrama. I thought romantic lead Gordon Oliver was quite good, and reliable slimeball Ricardo Cortez is also on hand.

Just thought I’d throw that in.
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CliffClaven
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Obviously Luke was constrained by a script written for Karloff and barely touched to accommodate him. Still, it's disappointing to see him play it like a dull kid playing an old man, especially after seeing him energize not only Number One Son but the sidekick in Agent X-9 and even the obedient Kato in Green Hornet. If Withers was going to spend the movie being annoyed, they should have had Luke energetically annoy him. And hey, maybe express non-professional interest in Miss Long before the final fadeout.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Nice to hear praise for John Farrow, Frank. I've always thought he was underrated, and he clearly led an interesting life.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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