Mr. Wong, No. 5 - Doomed to Die (1940)

Staring down the prospect of writing and blogging about Doomed to Die, I fear the same sort of apathy which shattered my meager efforts to opine on the former Fatal Hour. There are a few facts (that is to say, one single fact) to pique interest: Though not quite the last in the series (there’s one more), this is Boris Karloff’s final outing as the plot-resolving Mr. James Lee Wong – a Wong swan song. I wish that filled me with some emotion, any emotion, but it’s surprising just how neutral Karloff has been as the titular detective. I don’t know what to attribute that to, the films’ strident and unusual effort to avoid racism, Monogram’s one-take refusal to ever make a movie remotely beyond barely adequate, or simply an apathy on Karloff’s part which rivals my own. The fact is that here he is at his end, with a far awesomer career surrounding him on all sides…Hell, maybe it was just contracts keeping Karloff around for as many lackluster entries as he did.

So, in light of the challenge which Doomed to Die poses to my icy soul, I shall “live blog it,” as it were, and let my initial reactions form what ultimately makes its way online – An old fallback of mine, when inspiration fails, and something I almost always hate doing (last use: Disaster Movie).

First, let us ignore the opening titles, which reveal nothing, and revel in uncharacteristically stereotypical “Oriental” music. La la la la la…

Okay, movie’s on! Stock footage of a ship segues to stock footage of newspapers flying at us (a common aviation hazard in 1940) to warn of a ship-borne inferno. For a bit of exposition, this is clever enough, even leaning upon Monogram’s loony love of midgets.

Now offices, set-bound boredom replacing stock footage zaniness. The movie’s too quick for me, rushing through three character intros (complete with back story, role, personality, everything, so they never need bother with it again), all in the time it takes me to type up “three.” Let’s see, there’s an attorney Victor Martin (Henry Brandon), the besuitedly bland Matthews (Wilbur Mack), and Wentworth (Melvin Lang), the grand poobah of the bunch – who is the likeliest party for first act murder.


The movie continues to unspool speedily, but sans interest, as I take the time needed to take screen caps…As we learn that Wentworth, apart from being a businessman with a murder-baiting will, also has an inevitable-love-interest daughter Cynthia (Catherine Craig). There’s some exposition which hints, obliquely, at the Manhattan Project – surely Monogram’s typewriter simians didn’t know of this by ’40, but this prediction reflects the increasing wartime concern of the era.

Now a similarly suited Cyrus is here (Melvin Lang), to brag with Wentworth about the shipping business – I recall my habit of exceptional wordiness when keyboard-narrating movies, so it’s time to slow down a bit, maybe read a few online articles while doing this too. [Dur de dur…] Oh, here’s Ted! – And by “Ted” I mean “Dick,” because old movies have muddled dialogue often. Dick is either Wentworth’s son-in-law, or his actual son, and I hope it’s the former, because he’s actively seeking Cynthia’s hand in marriage – yup, there’s the standard Young Lover Couple right there – Where’s Wong?! I demand death!

Okay, this is how these mysteries go: Basically every suspect is mad at every other, specifically mad at Wentworth, who’s gone and – No, wait, Cyrus is the murder victim! That’s a surprise! (Small miracles.) “He’s dead.” Dialogue!


Cynthia’s introduction occurs alongside the return of recurring character “Bobbie” Johnson (Marjorie Reynolds), the damn best thing about these movies – channeling just the slightest hint of screwball energy into these more anemic mysteries. And – that scene didn’t last long. I fear this’ll be the way with Bobbie.

Crime scene, now it’s Bill Street’s (Grant Withers) reintroduction, he the series’ secret main character – more than ever now in this epic example of Wonglessness. Street oversees the investigation with his characteristic incompetence, habitually selecting the male half of the Young Lover Couple as el suspecto numero uno – thus Dick is arrested in a random, stylish unrelated scene.

At the station, Street plays with his shackled Dick, trying to agitate Dick so that Dick might spit forth information. Bobbie is there. Wow, there is nothing of note so far, I’d have nothing to say without this stream-of-consciousness approach to lean upon – only Wong’s continued nonexistence is worth noting, but the character is enough of a blank slate for it to not even matter. Nearly twenty minutes in… (Of 67.)

No wait, here is Wong!


I guess it’s a good thing Wong arrived when he did, because the plot was spiraling helplessly out of control – Wong insists that opening stock footage ship indeed had some pertinence. Furthermore, a few of the poor drowned souls aboard it were Chinese, which in this franchise is always a functional substitute for a genuine clue.

Chineseness being enough, Wong is off to Chinatown, a bi-entry sojourn, owing to Monogram’s limited sets – such as the same apothecary store and tong hideout (though as a sequel, set repetition is excusable, as it is the same setting). Tongs and Wong review potential leads, what with secret missions and whatnot and – Okay, I’m hungry! Time to let the movie unspool in silence while I go and procure some microwaveable taquitos…

…

While those delicious morsels cook up, nothing new to report on the movie end. Tongs prong Wong – with violence – leading to a stock footage car chase and – My food is ready!

…

There’s actual gunfire and blood and crashing cars all about, which is rather closer to the late ‘40s Monogram I’m more familiar with. I – [eat eat eat!] – appreciate this approach, this is nonsensical, but is something Monogram can do to overcome the shallow characters, the inconsequential plot, the general disposability. And with that scant uptick in energy, Karloff actually gets a subtle laugh line – something closer to the Karloff one pictures headlining a detective series.

A scene away from Wong, Street or Bobbie, back to Wentworth’s scheming (concerning Cyrus’ presumed suicide, which hasn’t really been stated clearly yet). This isn’t worth commenting upon. [Eat eat eat!]

Eventually our central trio barges upon the scene, to trade further expository info. Surprise surprise, even in this writing approach, I find I cannot commit to actually listening to this mess. I do not care about how Dick relates to Wentworth and the rest, this being the sort of narrative complexity which is hard to present cinematically – an ongoing struggle of period mysteries. Arghh! There’s some effort at using Dick’s obvious innocence to draw us along emotionally, but he is just a tool for pure technical exposition, the same as everybody else.


[Extended pause to fend off a phone call from my bored friend in Wisconsin.]

Okay, it’s a challenge now to regain grounding in the film, so I’ll just dig out on the noir-tinged cinematography – possibly just an accident of cheap resources and B&W film. It’s still moody and effective, especially since a no doubt soon-to-die cat burglar is being stalked up a fire escape by – is that Wong? Yup. Man has a habit of entering buildings via unusual entries – in this case, a tenth-storey window. It’s something, characterization-wise. Yeah, these silent bits of proto-noir, divorced of earth-bound plots, are the best parts of mysteries – that is, when they aren’t being character comedies.

Street enters, pistol a-blazin’, and scares off the burglar without a single fatality. Things calmed down, I retire to heat up some more snacks…

Thankfully, Doomed to Die switches out inky black suspense for more traded comic barbs, courtesy of Bobbie. Food’s ready!


At some point – it goes to show my continued inattention that I cannot say when – Wentworth was killed, fulfilling the needed secondary death. What with a will and all, he really was doomed. [Eat eat eat!] Wong now begins his clever scheming in anticipation of the climax (some 20 minutes away), demanding infrared film – seeing as it’s 1940, this demands a pause for the Crime Lab™ guys to explain to Bobbie (women – sheesh) just what infrared film is, and why we should use it to exterminate the Nazis. Naturally, a lengthy development scene follows, to further ground this new technology. Thankfully, the Bobbie/Street love-hate relationship fuels this scene with humor. Wong remains mostly tiresome.

Down to the docks, to another shadowy Monogram set – Docks, for that automatic injection of atmosphere (unpictured)! The plot reasoning for this – to follow up on a new name on the ship’s manifest, but if you couldn’t tell, I’m beyond trying with this story. Wong, Street and Bobbie all separately creep around dark corridors, in a manner Ed Wood, Jr. would refer to as “lurking.” Bobbie sees something off screen, screams girlishly, and I suppose I can forgive this lapse into female ‘40s stereotyping, seeing as Bobbie is usually totally adverse to such shenanigans. And it reveals the occasional (but not set-in-stone) third corpse, identity yet unknown. (Future edit: It’s Tie Ling, the Asian guy they’ve come down to check up on.)


The creeping scene continues; in fact, the characters’ comic interplay mixes with it, yielding quite possibly the most engaging single sequence yet for Wong & Co. Perhaps energized by these more overtly horrific qualities, Karloff even tosses a little light ham-acting into his Wong – trilled recitations on Chinese artifact history. Things are exciting enough, I’ve even forgotten all about my taquitos. [Eat eat eat!]

And…another fat, style-free exposition scene in the police station. Doomed to Die has been operating at such a relatively elevated level for long enough, some downtime is earned. Time to debate the implications of the latest clues found, as I tune out. I similarly ignore Bobbie’s misconstruing of hari kari as “harry harry.” Odd how everyone (sans Wong, natch) keeps insisting upon suicide for each death, even while the latest dude was stabbed in the back. (Some of this is self-aware, and thus lightly humorous.)

Exposition scene. Ignored. All in service of stiffening Dick’s and Cynthia’s lovey-doveyness.


Time remains only for a climax. For whatever reason, Doomed to Die errs as it did at the start by refocusing upon a house of tiresome suspects. Among them is a larger old man I’ve probably confused with Wentworth throughout the picture, because I only now become aware of him – Paul Fleming (Guy Usher). And…he’s dead, shot, murdered, and someone’s responsible. (Here is a fault in this “immediate response” approach, because the instant I finish that sentence, it turns out Paul isn’t dead, but oh well.)

All this gets Wong, Street, Bobbie, all the people we care about – it gets them assembled with the rest. It plays according to clockwork: Wong makes a surprise allegation so Street can arrest the proper villain, and I’m too ethical as a blogger (and also I’m not paying enough attention) to reveal that shock ending to you. And though this finale isn’t terribly functional, it is a virtue of older movies that they know to quit before things get worse – the movie ended something like a minute ago, in typing time.

In conclusion (what creative writing!), Doomed to Die surprises me more than anyone by being halfway entertaining. Maybe it’s a result of this type-as-I-go approach, but I think it’s something as simple as an increase of stylish ‘40s cinematography. Repeatedly, these forgotten old B-movies excel at visuals, and flounder with narrative – which separate nicely. One recalls Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, which was praised by some of his contemporaries solely for its surreal visuals. The plot is decent, and works, but is mostly frivolous. Doomed to Die works in a similar, but much humbler, level. That is all.

Mr. Wong, No. 6 - Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

Losing the lead actor isn’t necessarily the death knell for a franchise. But with Boris Karloff’s departure from the Mr. Wong series, there was no more need for Wongs – not that Karloff particularly brought anything to the series, except his mere presence. Oddly, Karloff proved the universe wrong and found a role he could be boring in, but that name on the marquee was enough to fuel five movies entirely on its own. With Karloff off, there is now no reason for Monogram to wring Wongs for long – to say nothing that the Wong “creative” team (director: William Nigh, writer: some guys). So, freed from the expectation that the final Wong is anything but a one-off, new director Phil Rosen (familiar from many an East Side Kids film, notably Spooks Run Wild) does something wholly unprecedented for a series about an Asian detective:

He hires an Asian actor!

Between the sixty-one shared films of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong (the curiously prolific “Chinese detective” sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenre of mystery movies), only one film goes beyond the white race when casting its hero, and that’d be this movie, the final Wong – Phantom of Chinatown. Amazing to think that there was a time in Hollywood when slapping some yellowface and falsely slanty eyes on a Caucasian was the preferable alternative to providing minority actors with employment…which goes to show how progressive the overall Mr. Wong series has been to simply respect its Mr. Wong character, and not characterize him as an archaic and unsubtle stereotype. And when you’re casting a legitimate Asian lead in 1940 Hollywood, there is literally only one name on that list: Keye Luke


Keye Luke kicks ass! (Ignore the white guy on the right.) Luke was America’s sole Asian leading man of his generation – arguably, things wouldn’t evolve beyond that until Bruce Lee crossed over in Enter the Dragon. (Luke anticipated Lee even by playing Cato, the Green Hornet’s inarguably more competent sidekick.) Hell, by 1961, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hollywood was still allowing its noble Caucasians run condescending rampage over a whole continent’s people!

Anyway, Keye Luke is awesome, and totally comfortable in the Asian mystery format, having long played Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son” Lee. It is an example of Luke’s never-tested acting skill that his one-film interpretation of Wong is nothing like his more naïve, enthusiastic Lee. In Phantom of Chinatown, Luke channels some degree of Karloff’s flat, almost nonexistent performance, but makes it interesting. Consider it: Karloff’s seeming intent with Wong was to be inoffensive – a damned hard thing to do when the costumer has given you prosthetic buckteeth. Karloff’s solution was to make Wong completely without personality – unless the world’s blandest stoicism counts – as an effort to avoid anything which might be construed as anti-Asian. This was his defining trait, to be not stereotypical, and yet Wong remained defined by his Asianness – a thankless paradox, in light of Karloff’s unmistakable English background.

Luke avoids the pitfalls of Karloff’s interpretation by being Asian. Thus he needn’t worry about demeaning an “other,” and must only be concerned with not appearing like the Chinese equivalent of Stepin Fetchit – a role which series regular (or as he’d say, “legural”) Lee Tung Foo has inhabited ever since Mr. Wong, Detective. Instead, Luke plays Wong as a normal person – a completely radical interpretation of race circa 1940, to be sure! To maintain continuity, Luke channels Karloff’s uncharacteristic blandness, but turns it into a straight-faced, deadpan irony. Actually, there’s a bit more to Luke’s surprisingly subtle, varied Wong, which leads to another way in which Phantom of Chinatown is a shockingly atypical movie:

It is a prequel!


Prequels weren’t yet common in the film franchise vernacular by 1940, and Phantom of Chinatown doesn’t advertise this fact, but it remains evident that Luke’s Wong is a younger, less experienced version who would eventually morph into Karloff – race-bending and all!

To prove this is a prequel, and not just typical 1940 half-assed discontinuity (a commonplace occurrence among Poverty Row franchises), Luke’s Wong has only just arrived in San Francisco. He lives out of a hotel with Foo. He first meets Police Captain Street (Grant Withers, officially becoming the sole actor to weather the entire six-film series...eh, he and Foo), and solves his first murder mystery – drawn into it because of a coincidental Oriental connection (and no accidental Occidental!). There are even subtler details, such as the presence of a cop named Grady, whose unseen murder would eventually fuel Part Four, The Fatal Hour.

Sadly, this unofficial prequel status negates the possibility of Marjorie Reynolds’ fantastic Bobbie Logan returning, but Luke more than makes up for that deficiency.

So…prequel when they weren’t made, starring a Chinese actor in a leading role…it’s as though Rosen & Co. knew there was no need to perpetuate the series, and were simply shattering some well-shattered taboos. The result is, to be contrarian with average internet opinion (which holds, predicably, that Part One is always the best), I think the very best film in the Wong throng, made that way by the freedom of being the last.


Hell, even the desultory murder mystery angle is a little fresher this time around! Luke aside, the movie as a whole is a damn lot clearer under Rosen than any of Nigh’s efforts. (Because complex mysteries were never the Wong forte.) Recall, the cases formerly have involved such scintillating non-issues as check fraud, bank statements, multiple unofficial drafts of wills, radio contracts, shipping manifests, and other such effluvia I’ve struggled to give half a shit about. Phantom of Chinatown is instead about archeology! This is awesome!

The opening seems hardly to belong in the Wong swan song. Stock footage unspools about an archeological expedition into Darkest Mongolia, but here it’s legitimately presented as footage – that is, part of a post-trek lecture, so we needn’t play the game of pretending it fits in with Monogram’s rather less grainy original film stock. And in an era where newsreels were one’s window into the world, showing genuine footage of Mongolia has worth. Then, in the midst of this, we randomly flashback to a portion of the archeologists’ journey, simply because Monogram had a temple set lying around.


Cutting to the chase, lecturer Dr. Benton (Charles F. Miller) dies in full audience view when he sips some poisoned water. The suspect roster is comprised of his expedition partners, filling the usual roles – including Lover Couple and Random Crusty Old Dude. As Street and Wong separately look into the matter, for their separate reasons, the motive underlying all this becomes welcomely clear: The killer seeks a scroll. A scroll detailing the whereabouts of the Temple of Eternal Fire (!), and its treasure – which isn’t ancient relics, but oil deposits. Ooh, timely!

You know, phrasing a murder mystery in the genre trappings of an old Republic serial – i.e. if Indiana Jones did more detection, and less Nazi-punching – makes things so much easier to follow. Simply as a common movie motif, pulpy tomb raiding carries rules and connotations, whereas check fraud does not. What follows, for the rest of the film, is remarkably clear, all because “wants a scroll” is as simple as “wants the Ark,” or “the Maltese Falcon,” or “the microfilm.”


Such simplicity is in keeping with Phantom’s prequel status, since Luke’s Wong is just getting a feel for this whole gumshoe thing. He teams up quickly enough with Street. As an example of Phantom’s unique take on the mystery genre, Street and Wong even acknowledge how formulaic the story they’ve found themselves in appears. Each admits – this is the first time an old mystery film has copped to this standard – that the most obvious suspect is never the killer, at least in fiction. This attitude never gets too smarmily “meta,” partly because that wasn’t really an option circa 1940, but it shows Rosen approached Wong more critically than Nigh ever did.

The entire Wong series has distinguished itself by being racially progressive, at least for its time, underplaying or thumbing its nose at then-common notions of “Oriental exoticism.” Phantom of Chinatown takes this idea the furthest, beyond its casting of Luke, by populating a massive amount of the supporting cast with other Asians. The tradeoff of this spontaneous affirmative action is that there were hardly any other Asian actors then available. Lotus Long, long-time (heh?) regular series victim, is promoted to leading lady status, which seems a little beyond her acting abilities, though I’m glad they gave her the chance. Most other Asian actors appear to be complete amateurs. Overall, however, this is a minor problem.


Keye Luke is really the lucky key to Phantom of Chinatown – the mystery, though clear, is mostly disposable, and many other elements on hand aren’t distinct enough from the regular Wong throng (or any Monogram effort, for that matter). Wong is clearly learning his chops (suey – sorry, that’s a joke these films would make), like an incredibly minor variation on Casino Royale’s chief pleasures. That self-aware attitude serves Wong through the end, since he’s not a master detective, not in this version, but just a guy copying what the movies show him. So to finally catch the killer, Wong uses a Charlie Chan Special™ - without actual knowledge or clues, instead he fakes the appearance of such, and instead lays an ambush. The crook(s) is/are arrested, and Wong doesn’t even deign to conclude with a know-it-all expository lecture to fill us all it. That isn’t needed, for things are clear enough already. Events are fast paced, which more than offsets the procedural structure. The characters, especially Wong, are more engaging than usual, proving that is a mystery film’s true bread and butter.

Keye Luke never enjoyed another role nearly as prominent as this one, though he worked prolifically for the rest of a fruitful career, well into the 1980s. Most of Luke’s credits remain in the B-movie miasma of Monogram and their competitors, which is no slight to what he might’ve achieved in a later generation. Phantom of Chinatown, though generic, stands as an example of what might’ve been, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

Mr. Wong, No. 3 - Mr. Wong in Chinatown (1939)

A desperate Chinese woman (a returning Lotus Long in a new role, because Asian actresses were a rarity in 1939 Hollywood) seeks Mr. Wong’s help. While the butler goes to collect Mr. James Lee Wong (Boris Karloff), an assassin gathers. A dart strikes her the neck! Mr. Wong arrives only to find her dead, the lone clue a hastily scribbled message:

CAPTAIN J

So begins Mr. Wong in Chinatown. That’s a propulsive opening, giving Wong a murder to solve with greatest efficiency – only to be one-upped if a cadaver simply splatted in, “Flying Circus” style. We don’t even have suspects yet! Instead, Wong wends his way along a chronological trail of clues, Hangover style, making Mr. Wong in Chinatown structurally a very different beast.

And in the Wong series’ mania to imitate the Charlie Chan movies as much as possible, it’s done the impossible, and ripped off Chan’s The Chinese Ring…which wasn’t released until 1947…Hold up! Did Chan rip off Wong?!?!...Indeed he did, though I didn’t know it at the time! But that was when Chan had Wong, er, long been banished to Monogram Pictures, fulfilling Monogram’s desire to have the true Chan series, thus negating them of the need to create any more Mr. Wongs. So it goes, that on top of recycling sets, props, actors, footage and musical cues, Monogram also recycles scripts. But with an eight-year gap, one World War and no internet, who would’ve noticed? Seriously, we bloggers today are perhaps a far more demanding lot.


The similarities between Mr. Wong in Chinatown and The Chinese Ring are extreme! Like, I could probably just repost my old Chan write-up, and trade out Chan puns for Wong puns. Let’s explore the similarities.

The Chinese Ring likewise opens with a Chinese gal – I now reveal in each case she’s a Chinese princess (!) – killed in Wong-Chan’s San Francisco home (for Chan, this means an awkward relocation away from Honolulu, which only now becomes clear – it’s plagiary). The only difference is in name – Princess Lin Hwa here, Mei Ling there. And her note in that one concerns a Captain K. …Oh, and the Chan princess abbreviates: “Capt.,” not “Captain,” which seems more efficient when death is upon you, only now I’m really splitting hairs.


In either case, J or K (or Rowling?), it’s a pretty useless clue, once Wong-Chan discovers the Princess’ ship has two Captains J/K upon it. Today, that’s Jackson (George Lynn) and Jaime (William Royle). To spoil (thou hast been warned!), it turns out the Princess didn’t specify further, because they’re both culpable – not for murder, however, but something far more boring (i.e. more appropriate for the rather draggy Mr. Wong franchise)…

The Js (or Ks) are committing – bank fraud! That bored me to tears previously, and it’s no better in original form. Chinese check chat, Chan or Wong, does not belong. It’s all bank account this, forged signature that, assorted unrelated airplane nonsense this…


Back to the parallels! Wong-Chan’s investigation(s) leads him-them to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where big trouble evidently is afoot. Our Chinese detective hero, by either name, discovers the Princess’ maid in an apartment. After some brief dialogue, enough to justify the hiring of a second Asian-American actress, Wong-Chan leaves, then returns just as quickly, to find the woman now dead. That’s rather soon to get the formula-dictated second murder, but oh well.

As this is going on, there’s also a small, mute “Chinaman” for Charlie Wong to play charades with. Soon the mute is also dead – okay, we learn this much sooner in The Chinese Ring, because here the movies begin to part ways, though they follow the same broad plot structure. As an example of where they diverge, the earlier Mr. Wong in Chinatown makes its mute a midget, a bizarre choice which cannot help but get your attention. This midget choice is also essential for a future clue – it’s no arbitrary bit of oddity. The Chinese Ring, meanwhile, employs a mute child, and child murder is far worse than midget murder (see In Bruges).


I’ll now relate, for the second halves, the broader details where the two pictures remain of a piece: Either way, Captains J/K lure Wong-Chan to an ambush, and take him hostage down to the docks. Then the police arrive (coincidentally in Chan’s case, due to careful scripting in Wong’s), and the day is saved. In the Chan entry, the Ks are the ultimate criminals, as for Wong the Js are just there as a distraction from the real murderer who is then surprisingly revealed. Odd how the earlier film is more intricate.

This is because, as a series, Mr. Wong has certain regular elements to rely upon, which the Chan entry didn’t, despite being Part Forty-Two (long series!). Basically, Mr. Wong has his recurring ally, Captain (J? no) Street (Grant Withers) of the SFPD. (In Mr. Wong in Chinatown, his first name inexplicably switches from Sam to Bill – something else audiences of the past wouldn’t dwell upon at quite the same length.) Street helps investigate, and is a foil for Wong’s Chan-like cleverness. The Chinese Ring, meanwhile, was something of a Chan reboot (a new lead actor, for one), and thus ditched much of what Mr. Wong in Chinatown could build upon.


So Bill Street follows the same set of clues as Wong does, usually a few steps behind him. Thus it makes perfect sense for Street to barge in on the Js’ thuggishness towards the end, when in Chan the anonymous cops’ intrusion was much more left field. Plus, there are a few more interim pieces in the Wong version, such as an extra suspect (a thrilling and captivating suited banker named Davidson – Huntley Gordon) to give Wong just that little extra oomph.

All this gives me something to talk about, which is nice because on its own Mr. Wong in Chinatown isn’t hugely distinctive from the former Wongs. It loses that drawing room mystery element of Mr. Wong, Detective and The Mysterious Mr. Wong, in favor of something just the slightest bit more adventurous. It also ends with a clear cut climax, involving the pseudo-villainous Js, which nicely distracts before Wong whips out the “surprise” extra bad guy revelation. There’s also a little more focus upon Chinese elements, giving Mr. Wong in Chinatown the flavor it desperately needs.


Yes, the series is boring, but they’ve solved that…sort of…at least for one entry. Mr. Wong is, sadly, a lost cause, for in Karloff’s aim to not be racist (i.e. overtly Asian), his Wong is a non-entity. That leaves Street, who regains a little of his Mr. Wong, Detective surliness, without crossing back over into “asshole” (don’t cross Street – uh hyuck hyuck!). And with Wong wrong, Street instead intersects with a new character, to better bounce off of him: reporteress “Bobbie” Logan (Marjorie Reynolds). That character name would suggest, circa 1939, Torchie Blaine – or, in terms we might still understand, Lois Lane – Either way, Bobbie is a rip-off of another popular character, a tabloid newswoman full of spunk and gumption and sticktoitiveness and whatever, prone to creeping around, uncovering clues, and screwballing it up. And in Bobbie’s case, rather than needing rescue by Superman, she herself occasionally rescues Wong (from a taxicab explosion, e.g.), as Wong is starting to actively embrace uselessness by now.

Actually, Bobbie is what saves Mr. Wong in Chinatown, so I’m glad that I peaked ahead to learn she’ll become a franchise regular. She sort of steals the thunder from Wong, but so be it. More importantly, she enjoys a love-hate relationship with Street, who hates her but also somehow loves her. This has, from a certain skewed perspective, the makings of a typical 1930s screwball comedy, ala His Girl Friday, married to a generic murder mystery. This is element is, I’d wager, what will set the remaining Wongs apart from the general morass of mis-mustered Monogram murder.


There isn’t much more to say about Mr. Wong in Chinatown – lo, even with a couple of distinct angles, this is a rather anemic little flick. I’ll just fulfill my brief promise that the midget’s very midgetness comes into play later. One learns, by watching mysteries, that the most randomly extraneous, B.S. little factoids often come back to bite. Either I’m getting better at locating these hidden hints (such as the mattress in The Hangover, which is honestly the mystery movie most of us know best nowadays), or the Mr. Wong movies are that lousy at hiding them – I’d wager the latter.

Anyway, while Wong is engaging a certain character in the old “five minute chat because here’s this set we must use” routine, that character for no reason discusses burying a ferocious Great Dane (Scooby?) in the pet cemetery. Wong, ever a fount of totally obscure and arcane trivialities as the plot demands, knows enough of pet cemetery politics (!) to deduce, from that, that it’s actually the midget buried there. In a grave most folk couldn’t fit in. And this is the key which determines the whole denouement! Pretty neato little bunch of clues there, Mr. Wong in Chinatown. Too bad The Chinese Ring couldn’t’ve copied those.

Mr. Wong, No. 4 - The Fatal Hour (1939)

What is the purpose of Mr. Wong? Sure, the character is merely an opportunistic copy of other period Chinese detectives, like Charlie Chan or Mr. Moto, but with one notable difference – Mr. Wong’s characterization is not racist. (I can’t yet speak for Moto, but Chan is defined wholly by a “fortune cookie say” persona.) To avoid gross, broad stereotypes, instead Mr. Wong is defined by not seeming overtly Chinese – not too difficult, when actor Boris Karloff is himself the last person anyone would ever mistake for an Asian. Thus sometimes Monogram’s Mr. Wong series is surprisingly progressive, respecting non-white culture and doing other things that were mostly unheard of in 1939.

Too bad Mr. Wong, as the “Chinaman who isn’t a Chinaman,” doesn’t have a lot of other characteristics. The Mystery of Mr. Wong did well enough by being about stolen Chinese artifacts, where Wong’s normalcy could serve a point, but no longer. By Part Four, The Fatal Hour (as evidence of Wong’s boringness, his name no longer even appears in the titles), Wong’s a-Chineseness (or however you’d put it) is entirely dried out…Its only remaining use is a single incident where a racist thug calls Wong “that Chinese copper.” Karloff’s Wong responds with subtle indifference – or blandness, rather. Otherwise, there is no element in The Fatal Hour which informs Wong in any way. He admits so much himself, stating that this latest murder mystery has basically nothing to do with him.


So Mr. Wong fades into the background of his own series. He remains, not as a human personality, but entirely as an anthropomorphized plot device. These murder mysteries ain’t gonna solve themselves, and the cops are pretty worthless, so we need Wong to selflessly steer everyone in the proper direction. Then the climax comes along, and Wong can reveal the murderer, exposit a little in retrospect, the end. These movies wouldn’t end without him, but they wouldn’t even function were he the focus.


Instead, the true star of the Mr. Wong films, more and more, is his San Francisco PD counterpart, Bill Street (Grant Withers). Street is free to be as ineffective as he wishes, without any complaints about misrepresentation – except from police officers. He is the most engaging character of the series, which isn’t actually saying much. Street’s disposition can vary wildly from film to film, going from a hot-headed, tactless rabble-rouser to a well-meaning detective who’s simply in over his head. With the plots increasingly perfunctory, and Wong MIA more and more, Street reverts to his jerkass ways – this isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

Actually, promoting Street up to unofficial “lead” status (only with Wong’s name forever ahead of his in lights, the poor douchebag) is sort of like creating an entire movie out of Paul Gleason’s Die Hard character (you know, the stupidest of the cops, who was still somehow in charge…until the Johnsons showed up). It’s kind of telling that The Fatal Hour coasts on that sort of characterization, with Boris Karloff that ineffectual.


Ostensibly aiding Street – not necessarily in the investigations, but in being remotely entertaining – is his female reporter counterpart, “Bobbie” Logan (Marjorie Reynolds). In fact, since her introduction in the previous Mr. Wong in Chinatown, Ms. Logan has been the best thing about the series. Basically, she’s Lois Lane, only with a habit of saving others. Sadly, The Fatal Hour doesn’t really know what do to with her – which should be to place her and Street into something like a cheap-ass version of His Girl Friday meets The Thin Man. This doesn’t happen in The Fatal Hour, which relegates Bobbie almost as badly as it does Wong – I suppose respecting women and the Chinese through competent characterizations is one thing, though it leaves a B-movie studio of the era rather ill-prepared to do anything with them. Sigh.

Actually, it seems the majority of The Fatal Hour’s efforts are wasted on new characters, the suspects of today’s murder mystery – which is such a desultory affair, the first line of dialogue (that is, the first scene as well) simply announces by fiat that some guy Grady is dead, yadda yadda. It’s more efficient even than Mr. Wong in Chinatown’s introductory princess murder (!), but in a way which removes all dramatic impetus.


The Fatal Hour is dramatically anemic, because director William Nigh no longer has any idea (or inspiration) for how to use his three recurring characters. Instead, as said, it’s all so much attention lavished upon the lesser one-off supporting characters. Now…the plot of The Fatal Hour is, assuredly, nothing too complex – something to do with murder, naturally, on top of personal politics, dance clubs, and radio (that astonishing new space age invention of the future!) – I’d’ve been able to follow this story most easily, had I been willing to do so. The fact is that murder mysteries are often the least important detail of murder mystery movies (again, look to The Thin Man for the highly entertaining reason why). Thus, between overexposure to Wongs (such as it is) in a short time (plus over 40 Chans previously under my belt), I am somewhat apathetic to the prosaic concerns of a mystery film. This is an admission that most film reviewers, even fly-by-night blogger types, should rarely admit to: Actively not paying attention to a movie.


Really, there’s not much to say about The Fatal Hour which I haven’t gone over in former Wongs – at this rate, my final post on this series will be in the negative word count. Maybe it’ll just be pictures. For now, though, there’s at least one final bit of scripted strangeness which I cannot help but comment upon…

Again, the lone detail by which Wong solves the case is a mightily prominent hangnail. This time, it concerns radio technology of 1939. Specifically, Wong takes minutes (a waste, given his reduced screen time) to learn from a salesman all about Victrola’s latest toaster-sized remote controls. It’s the wonder of the ages, now you can change between the three old-timey pre-rock ‘n’ roll radio stations from a distance, like a spaceman or a wizard! I understand the tech was new in ’39, and required exposition to an incredulous mass of filmgoers, but it dates The Fatal Hour something fierce! (Oh, like The Fatal Hour was ever not going to be dated.) I’d wager many a “CSI,” so enamored of the latest nanotech gobbledygook or whatnot, will share this same fate.

What’s interesting is just how radio remotes figure into cracking the case. You see, it concerns the timing of a murder, which coincides roughly with the radio being turned on. Now, the villain turned on this radio from two–hundred feet out (thus somehow expanding the murder window by several hours, which I do not understand), but why?! Well, because in 1939, when a radio turns on, anywhere, if you hear it, you run to it, slobbering obediently like one of Pavlov’s dogs, eager for the latest pap from the shimmering voice box. Again, yeah, new technology and all, it’s old hat now, though I suppose people at E3 or wherever act similarly idiotic at its latest quivering gewgaws. Still, if I heard my neighbor’s radio turn on really loud, my first instinct wouldn’t be to rush over so as to stand docily before the machine in awe. I would demand he turn the damn volume down already – sorry, I’m working through some personal issues here.


Um…and that’s The Fatal Hour, a movie so disposable and boring, my writing quality has devolved to 2010 levels. Huzzah!

Mr. Wong, No. 2 - The Mystery of Mr. Wong (1939)

First up, some corrections:

To fix yesterday’s strange, baseless musing about Béla Lugosi, it turns out he was never in a “white ‘Asian’ detective” series. Rather, director William Nigh’s earlier filmography includes a 1935 film called The Mysterious Mr. Wong. It is entirely distinct from Nigh’s later “Mr. Wong” series, with Lugosi’s titular Mr. Wong a Faux Manchu rather than a Sham Chan. The more you know…)

More damningly, I yesterday claimed that Mr. Wong, Detective was, unlike Charlie Chan or Mr. Moto or so many others, not based on a preexisting print series. I was dead wrong on Wong. Monogram’s Wongs (the Wong-ograms) are based on the “James Lee Wong” series in Colliers Magazine, by Hugh Wiley, of which I can find no more information. That doesn’t change the fact that this is mostly a low budget 1930s Asylum variation on Fox’s Charlie Chan movies.


That being said, having serialized magazine stories to adapt takes a lot of pressure off of Monogram’s jabbering, quasi-literate screenwriters to devise new stories. These are adaptations, and the sequel – The Mystery of Mr. Wong – followed under a year after Part One. I wish I knew more specifically what the timeline was, since two more sequels follow in that same year (1939) – obviously, Monogram was a very efficient filmmaking factory, even if they sacrifice little things like thrills or sets or budget or characterization or drama or general quality.

Boris Karloff returns as Mr. James Wong, with no noticeable variation in his Wong interpretation – i.e. he’s still surprisingly bland (a very unusual thing for Karloff). William Nigh returns as director, likewise not varying his approach one significant bit. If anything, The Mystery of Mr. Wong (and mind you, Mr. Wong himself is all but mysterious) is less cinematic than Mr. Wong, Detective. It takes the classic Monogram approach of simply arranging its cast by their marks, filmed at mid-range, and that is that [dusting off hands]. These sorts of films would work just as well as radio dramas, but considering it probably took Nigh only slightly longer to film it than it’ll take me to write this blog entry, one’s expectations diminish accordingly.

The Mr. Wong series was already highly prescribed, formulaic, long before Part Two. So it goes, when conforming to a highly regimented genre (the 1930s murder mystery), plus ripping off Charlie Chan. If the potential for variation did exist, Nigh would shoot it down in an instant, for that is not in the Mono-Wongs’ interest. Thus now, as both before and since, it’s the same Sisyphean struggle, with people reduced to stock types: A big house in San Francisco, intrigue abounds, one person is murdered, Mr. Wong investigates along with the SFPD, a couple more people die in due course, and the murderer is discovered. Case closed, let’s go get some delicious, steaming hot tea.


Within these limitations, a viewer learns to appreciate the tiniest details. Character names change, but their central roles remain the same…

The respected businessman who fears for his life, and is destined to jumpstart the plot by dying: Brandon Edwards (Morgan Wallace)

His shady business partner of dubious ethnicity: Michael Strogonoff (Ivan Lebedeff – a Russian)

His wife: Valerie Edwards (Dorothy Tree – not a Russian, yet somehow SHE’s the communist)

Her extramarital lover, because these mystery films often assume a lover couple to provide the emotional underpinning (something the titular master detective cannot bring). Also, affairs (though patently immoral, says Hays) are an easy way to increase motives: Peter Harrison (Craig Reynolds)

The manservant and maid, each to arouse suspicions in the most genre-naïve viewers, then possibly die at midway to deflect same suspicions: Sing (Chester Gan, for all your outdated stereotypical Asian needs) and Drina (Lotus Long)

An extra guy, who seems to have no reason for being here (read: is probably the murderer): Prof. Ed Janney (Holmes Herbert)

This isn’t exactly the interpersonal situation found in Part One, but it’s close enough – I couldn’t’ give you a mathematical formula for 1930s mystery suspects, but I’m certain it could be done.


Similarly, there must be a MacGuffin, to either drive the motive, or be a red herring. Switching out Detective’s chemical weapons, Mystery goes for a gem, jewel or sapphire, to go by its various designations: the “Eye of the Daughter of the Moon,” the world’s largest MacGuffin, and one recently stolen from China by Edwards – hence he’s crooked enough for us to not be terribly bothered when he’s shot dead in full view of everybody. Keep in mind this big rock isn’t the only motive, for it’s a mystery’s duty early on to pile on as many arguments as possible, to cultivate potential plot threads – the rest of the film is then an act of Mr. Wong discovering which possible narrative is real, and which isn’t. Until the end, and the actual clues and motives are highlighted – and no, I shan’t be revealing what they are.

As with many a mystery, there’s a lot of exposition to get out of the way, and a lot of that to cover even before the inciting murder. This requires Mr. Wong be present in advance, so even if the “Eye” is a functionally useless MacGuffin (in other words, a proper MacGuffin), its Chinese origin is enough to draw in our protagonist. Because Mr. Wong is among the world’s foremost experts on ancient gemstones, which embroils him in eventual mystery successfully enough that we hardly question why he (a nonprofessional civilian) has jurisdiction over the police throughout this series.


The police are back, and as ignorant as ever! I was correct in predicting that Captain Sam Street (Grant Withers) would become a series regular, the perennial foil for the all-wise Wong. Though Street remains by necessity a straw man, forever following the wrong clues to make Wong look better. Still, he (Street) is far better served by this entry. The Mystery of Mr. Wong drops the cops’ more annoying jerkass tendencies. Street is kinda boring now, which is the tradeoff for not being irritating. And that trade characterizes what this series means to me…boredom.

Recall that conceptually, Mr. Wong is an Asian detective – that’s an entire subgenre! As exemplified by Charlie Chan, the form is helplessly racist, fueled by the vestiges of Yellow Peril, even if it seeks to correct the greater problems of Fu Manchu stories. This means Chan’s Asianness was always played as his defining personality trait; Mr. Wong, as exemplified by Karloff’s inescapable whiteness, isn’t even remotely Asian. He’s even less “Chinese” in Mystery, dropping even his former tea mania.

(The supporting characters, when required to be Asian, are still played by Asian actors, who mostly eschew “Hong Chong Chew” caricatures – I say “mostly” because that precise phrase gets uttered in Mystery, as the name of a Chinese emperor. Sounds like baseball tobacco to me.)


So anyway, these Mr. Wong movies are (against all 1939 odds) not very racist, and so instead they are, yes, a little boring. Mr. Wong is an amazingly flat persona, and mystery films (where the actual plots are mostly interchangeable) live or die by their detective’s personae. What a shame that Boris Karloff’s skills were then wasted in multiple 1939 movies, when he could’ve played a few more brooding mad scientist types, to everyone’s benefit. For a franchise starring Karloff the Uncanny, I expected more!

However, for all that Mr. Wong’s race is a complete non-issue, tying the MacGuffin back in to China makes it an issue again – but in a completely agreeable way. To jump to the chase, The Mystery of Mr. Wong takes a surprisingly progressive stance about China’s sovereignty, at a time when other films basically portrayed the country as full of capuchin monkeys. Mr. Wong knows, while barely saying so, that the gem should be returned to its rightful ancestral owners, removed from grabby Americans. To quote Indy: “This belongs in a museum!”


When Mystery is over, there has been your bog-standard parlor assembly, missing only an extra “darkened lights murder” to reach full-on cliché. Mr. Wong even collects the remaining suspects with that most cliché of detective statements: “I submit we are all here for one purpose: to identify the murderer of the late Mr. Edwards.” (Eh, the “Mr. Edwards” part is a little more specific.) And he proceeds to frighten the murderer enough for him to reveal himself, in the absence of genuine clues – a very common movie detective ploy, known as the Charlie Chan Special™.

That’s not what I mean to highlight. Rather, more impressively, throughout all this Mr. Wong has secretly rediscovered and stolen the gemerald away from the baddies. The film ends – its final lines – with Wong tasking Sing the Chinese butler with returning the rock to China. More than just fooling a killer, Wong has fooled everyone (that includes Street’s somewhat imperialistic policemen)! So The Mystery of Mr. Wong is ultimately respectful towards China, which makes me rather like this movie, even if it is otherwise tedium in extract form.


It only remains to point out those rare moments when Mystery isn’t simply boring us silly. The most entertaining scene is actually Edwards’ murder. It happens during a rather glorified game of charades, with a gathering of what the Marx Bros. would call “snobs.” Edwards acts out these little pastiches with some of his potential murderers – and he knows someone is out to kill him. Given that, why would you agree to be the “victim” in a fictionalized stage shooting?! Especially considering it’s precisely this pretend death which ends up being Edwards’ real death – It’s really quite funny how conversation continues for minutes more before anyone (even Wong) realizes Edwards is a rotting corpse in a tuxedo.

The other random note involves what is, I swear for the life of me, an actually swear word! In 1939, the year that Gone with the Wind popularized the word “damn,” this Poverty Row production actually managed to sneak in the word “fuck” – with no contextual justification! At least, I think that’s what’s going on; see so for yourself (damn thing is unembeddable – sounds like a description of the girls I date), around 57:35 (that’s the whole movie there, by the way). Did Janney not just ask “Wong, what the fuck is this?” Am I hearing things?!

...

And…that’s about all I have to say. The Mystery of Mr. Wong respects the Chinese, and includes the f-word. In these subtle ways, it is a very unexpected movie.

Mr. Wong, No. 1 - Mr. Wong, Detective (1938)

The mystery genre was once surprisingly fertile, throughout the 1930s. Without even addressing one-offs, these are simply some of the franchises which adhered to this formula: Sherlock Holmes, The Thin Man, Bulldog Drummond, Hildegarde Withers, Torchy Blaine, Philo Vance…There is even a remarkably peculiar further subgenre…the “white guy plays an Asian detective” movie.

That particular niche is best exemplified by the Charlie Chan films, which had their start with a series of novels by Earl Derr Biggers – serialized novels being the origin of so many of these mystery franchises, which goes a way towards explaining their sudden existence. (So does the mere fact of filmic serialization, as movie series were just being explored as an idea in the ‘30s – largely by the B-studios.) Produced under Fox, the Chan films were reasonably successful and hugely prolific – with thirty entries, and that’s before Monogram Studios got their grubby little hands on the franchise in 1944. But before they could do that, Monogram was already hungry to snatch up some of Chan’s nascent racist luster for themselves, and thus they created a copyChan – Mr. Wong.


This wasn’t the only Chan channeler, for there was also the Mr. Moto series, also produced by Fox – which begs the question. While I remain for now entirely unfamiliar with the Peter Lorre-starring Mr. Moto, we turn our attentions wholly to Mr. James Wong, the sole Asian detective without any evident literary origin. Rather, we can look to Chan as Wong’s major inspiration, and play comparison. Each is a Chinese private citizen, residing in San Francisco, forever called upon by the police to solve regularly occurring formula murder mysteries – though the cinematic Chan would only do some of this later, so in 1938 this wouldn’t seem entirely unoriginal. (Indeed, the Mono-Chans took on some of Wong’s characteristics, for want of even the remotest creativity in Monogram’s monotonous movie machine.)

There is very little effort made to distinguish Mr. Wong from his betters – forsooth, Monogram was the Asylum of Classical Hollywood. The lone unique factor is the casting: Wong is essayed by Boris Karloff! Karloff “the Uncanny,” monstrous star of Frankenstein and subsequently more Universal horror films than a sane man can ever hope to comprehend. A brilliant character actor, Karloff had already appeared in Charlie Chan at the Opera, for my money the absolute tiptop of the Chan clan – which is largely Karloff’s doing! (Karloff’s friend/rival Béla Lugosi has some connection to the “rinky-dink Chink dick” genre as well, even beyond Chan’s The Black Camel.)


So…Mr. Wong is an astoundingly dull character – as evidenced by his “most generic Chinese name possible.” Perhaps this is because he’s a legally distinct semi-Chan with the edges hewn off. Here are his non-Chan-tastic characteristics: He has a mustache, glasses, black greasy hair; basically, he’s a white guy’s misinterpretation of “Darkest Orient.” He is deductively calm, always one step ahead of the police in a way which seems more derivative of Sherlock Holmes, only without the faintest justification. He has, at least by Part One, neither family nor friends, excepting a “buck-toothed Chinaman” manservant (Lee Tung Foo). Wong’s intended catch phrase is “Just a cup of tea.” Scintillating! [Snore!]

To Karloff’s kredit, though he kannot make Wong interesting, at least his performance isn’t the remotest bit racist – something that cannot be said of Chan’s charges, saddled with their falsely slanted eyes and stereotypical “Ah-so, me rikee the flied lice” dialogue. (Honestly, these Chan movies are a real affront to modern sensibilities!) Apart from his bland name and butler, the only indication that Mr. Wong is of any ethnicity is the silk robe he’s seen wearing in one scene. Oh, and that inane tea fascination. Karloff’s Wong is bracingly neutral, which is perhaps all we could ask for in these conditions.


The Mr. Wong series as a whole amounted to a mere six pictures (hardly anything at all by the standards of ‘30s franchises) all made within a three-year window – this highlights Monogram’s quick-and-dirty turnaround assembly line. Their wholly serviceable approach is evident in every stage of Mr. Wong, Detective, the intro entry. At 68 minutes, there is absolutely no time for dilly-dallying, and hence none of the characters – not even Wong – can make the remotest impression except as a cog in a formulaic B-movie. The story itself is paint by numbers, either to best facilitate Wong’s introduction, or because that’s what Chan channeling looks like. It is very difficult to tell the assorted mustachioed, suited businessman suspects apart, a common genre pitfall – it’s only by knowing the genre’s archetypes that one can keep suspects straight, and even then it’s difficult.

The tale starts out at an unnamed chemical factory, where the three principals – Simon Dayton (John Hamilton), Theodore Meisel (William Gould) and Christian Wilk (Hooper Atchley) – fashion an agreement whereby upon the death of one, the survivors inherit his shares. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our potential motive! In fact, it’s rather obvious, and I picture mystery movie audiences of the ‘30s would be superhumanly fluent with the assorted ins and outs of the genre. Thus they can spot an obvious red herring when they see it, and immediately start looking for the least obvious possible killer.


Mr. Wong, Detective follows a very bizarre path towards the climactic revelation – accomplished, as in all such mysteries, through ten minutes of exposition on the top dick’s (Wong’s) part. For even now we’re aware of a cabal of saboteurs – it being 1938, wartime tension was already rife, and every contemporary B-movie concerned itself with sabotage or weapon invention or similar such MacGuffins (all without nationality ever getting dropped – except the Bavarians, which rather ties this all back to Germany after all). There is no question that these schemers – Baron Von Krantz (!) (Lucien Prival) and the Countess Olga Dubois (!) (Evelyn Brent), plus a third goon whose name I could not catch – are behind the inevitable murder(s). No – question!

Usually, a mystery series only reverts to an obvious villain later on, as an anti-formula trick to throw off the audience – these stories then become about how the detective solves the case, with the outcome predestined. That’s not Wong’s tact. Instead, on top of these gimmes, there shall be the “surprise” culprit fingered at the end – and you can bet your shekels it’ll be the “least obvious” character…every time!

Actually – to jump to the conclusion way ahead of schedule, and spoil a third-rate film from 1938 none of you shall ever watch – that’s not it yet! There’s a fifth guilty party, making Mr. Wong, Detective practically the single most stuffed such mystery I’ve seen – nice it has at least one claim to non-Karloffian fame. On top of the saboteurs, and the non-obvious obvious suspect, the obvious obvious suspect is guilty too! Yup, look back up to those three business partners the story started with. One of them is to blame for the murder of the other two, in an amazingly rare instance where a mystery film plays 100% straight. (Though I’ve indeed seen movies where the butler does do it, which is even more subversive by not being subversive at all.)

Oh yes, a murder mystery needs murder, and Dayton is more than happy to oblige narrative formula by dying. Mr. Wong, despite being a private citizen, assists the SFPD in the case, and no reason is given for this except it’s his right as the headliner. The case follows perfectly perfunctory notes, as Wong examines the assorted suspects (many of whom I haven’t laid out, but they include the standard Woman, Lover, Shyster, Hateful Foreigner, and so forth). By around midpoint a second murder is committed (of Wilk, meaning logically Meisel is the meanie) – This second murder happens only because it does in all mystery movies, and is thus treated with ceremonial disregard. (There’s a third murder too – of Meisel, though it turns out he’s just a fantastically shitty murderer instead – which is only slightly less common.) You know, none of these fictional shamuses is any good, since over 50% of fatalities occur mid-investigation.


And I haven’t even gotten to the (obvious, obvious, obvious) clues yet. Perhaps it’s too many years raised by “CSI” (which I’ve never watched, for all the archaic potboilers I ravenously consume), or the ubiquity of mysteries in general, but when a story concerns a chemical manufacturer killed without any wounds, it should take seconds to figure out that poisonous chemicals were the murder weapon. I mean, come on! Mr. Wong plays that like a surprise revelation late in the game.

So naturally all viewers have correctly placed the means of death ahead of even Wong. Keep in mind all the guns present haven’t been fired (in that they have no empty chambers, and the victims have no bullet wounds), yet still the movie plays the “gun as weapon” angle endlessly. When Mr. Wong discovers broken glass on a corpse’s former person, here is my immediate reaction: “Oh, so the chemical was in a glass container, which was broken in some means.” Nailed it! That’s another “revelation” Monogram’s typewriter monkeys won’t make public until the denouement.

Plus, when we see Mr. Wong (having silently deduced stuff ahead of time) playing musical instruments before glass baubles, it doesn’t take a Holmes to deduce the glass was shattered by noise frequency. Honestly, this is the least effective mystery qua mystery I know of – ignoring at least the parody mysteries, and sometime even they fashion cleverer whodunits.


Granted all that, but the superior (though more offensive) Charlie Chans didn’t always have the world’s most airtight plots. That wasn’t to their detriment, because the joy was in seeing Chan solve the crime – or rather, seeing him flummox the latest suspects. In this task, Mr. Wong falls short, as a total cipher. As I’ve said, he functions solely as a plot device, nothing more.

“Aiding” Wong are the police – Captain Sam Spade, er, Sam Street (Grant Withers) and the even doofier Detective Devlin (George Lloyd). Any ostensible entertainment value comes from them. They are not competent. Because Wong is stoically boring, and fated to solve the case at the 66th minute, he can only be amusing in contrast to the cops. Thus they are painted as the mightiest batch of nincompoops possible – men so pre-inclined to leap wholeheartedly at the world’s most obvious red herrings (which, to their credit, sometimes turn out to be true – see Meisel), they’re barely credible as law officers. As straw men and foils to Wong (mystery cops can never catch a break), they’re too obvious. It’s as though Monogram’s filmmakers didn’t trust audiences to pick up on subtlety, so they created the brashest grotesques they could. I have a sneaky suspicion Street will become a recurring character. I am not pleased.


Because Mr. Wong, Detective is a Monogram product, it never had very much chance for greatness. There are too many handicaps in Monogram’s approach. Director William Nigh, nigh prepared to helm the majority of the series, is limited to a few sets – a house, a different house, an office, a different office, and Monogram’s patented Crime Lab™ (which shall be burned into my retinas in five days’ time). Add a roster of actors without the ability to stand out…except for Karloff, who simply doesn’t try, and the police performers, who stand out too much (they’re assholes!). Plus, time and limited resources conspire to limit Nigh’s blocking, so the film is nothing but assorted static shots of people standing around.

At least, to the benefit of the entire ‘30s mystery genre, what we have here are the nascent components of film noir. Almost without Nigh’s knowing, there is the faintest suggestion of urban ennui. At the very least, the black and white cinematography cannot help but be moody, in a smoky, shadowy way. That’s good enough, and future Wongs have the opportunity (thanks be to Karloff) to be at least slightly better than this. As a derivative bit of Poverty Row formula, nope, not brilliant, but…well, something.