The Mysterious Mr. Wong
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.58 You Save: $6.40 (80%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.99 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Mysterious Mr. Wong
Movie Review: A Lot of Fun
Summary: 4 Stars
Bela Lugosi changes genres in 1934's "The Mysterious Mr. Wong"; a detective mystery set in LA's Chinatown. As Li See he is the low profile owner of a herb shop patronized for comic relief by a stereotypical Irish cop. But he is secretly the title character who will stop at nothing to gather all twelve of the Coins of Confucius. Once he has all twelve he will have special powers in Keelat (a Chinese province) from where he apparently can inflict his evil on a wider scale.
All these coins have found there way to 1930's LA for some reason and Wong's minions spend the first part of the movie murdering assorted Chinese characters to gain possession of each coin. You quickly learn which guys are his minions because they are the only ones in the movie who wear "Billy Jack" style flat brim hats.
Newspaper reporter Jason Barton (Wallace Ford) begins to investigate the murders, both alone and in the company of his paper's cute and plucky switchboard operator Peg (Arline Judge). Judge becomes one of the earliest scream queens as talking pictures had only been around a few years. The chemistry and banter between Ford and Judge is the best thing about "The Mysterious Mr. Wong". It is the equal of Gable and Colbert in "It Happened One Night" but unfortunately their scenes together are not the central focus of the story.
Wong has a beautiful niece (played by Lotus Long) who periodically appears in short scenes of no actual consequence to the plot. She is in a constant state of great distress about her uncle's evil activities and it is implied that Wong kills her after she leads Barton and Peg to him.
The movie never explains why Wong regards this as a bad thing because it appears to be exactly what he wanted her to do. But this is an illustration of many logic problems in the screenplay, which are best ignored. Just enjoy the great dialogue despite the flaws in storyline logic. Some stuff essential to the plot was probably trimmed to reduce the running time. Barton and Peg are given one of the coins by a disembodied hand while they are having dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Viewers have to fill in a lot of missing action to connect this improbable coincidence with earlier events.
The Hollywood racist and ethnic stereotypes abound, my favorite is a Chinese university professor who heads up the Department of Orientology.
Lugosi is sinister in a nice self-parodying way, with an accent that is more vaguely foreign than Chinese. His Mr. Wong is entirely unrelated to Boris Karloff's later detective series of the same name.
If you enjoy early cinema this one is highly recommended. The suspense won't keep you on the edge of your seat but the Ford and Judge interplay is timeless
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Movie Review: Wallace Ford steals the show in Lugosi's first film for Monogram Pictures
Summary: 4 Stars
Following the success of Mask of Fu Manchu [VHS] (starring Boris Karloff) in 1932, Monogram Studios sought to exploit MGM's success with their own Yellow Peril-inspired film. And so it was that a down-on-his-luck Bela Lugosi donned the Oriental dress and stereotypical Fu Manchu mustache of Mr. Wong, a megalomaniacal madman bent on seizing full control of the Chinese province of Keelat. All he needs is to get his hands on the twelve coins of Confucius, for legend decrees that the holder of all twelve coins (even if it's a Chinaman with a Hungarian accent) will be granted the power to seize and control Keelat. The fact that Chinamen are dropping like flies on a daily basis is little more than an annoyance to the police, so the lion's share of the crime solving falls upon sharp-witted, fast-talking newspaper reporter Jason Barton (Wallace Ford), who manages to find and pursue a clue that leads him inexorably toward Wong and his power-hungry, murderous plans.
The real mystery here is how several of Confucius' coins ended up in the hands of relatively poor shop owners and laundrymen in China Town. Obviously, this wasn't the best plan for keeping the coins separate and hidden, for Mr. Wong finds them with little trouble and sends his henchmen out to forcibly retrieve them. Hidden away behind a secret identity and a network of secret passages, he appears to be safe from the likes of the local Irish cop and even Keelat's own secret service agents - but not from a nosy reporter who isn't even intimidated by a verbally dazzling barrage of "maybes." (OK, you really have to see the movie to know what I'm talking about here - sorry about that.)
Yes, this is a Monogram studio release, but don't let that scare you off. While Monogram's cache of low-budget B movies is hardly impressive as a whole, The Mysterious Mr. Wong is a very entertaining film (and far better than most of the later films Lugosi would make with this Poverty Row studio). While miscast, Bela Lugosi turns in his usual great performance (in something of a dual role, no less), while Wallace Ford is nothing short of delightful as the eminently quotable and disarmingly persistent news hawk determined to get to the bottom of the story. Barton's knack for witty repartee is front and center throughout, and his girl Peg (Arline Judge) more than holds her own in the same regard when he gets her mixed up in his dangerous investigation, as well. The banter isn't on the level of His Girl Friday, but it's some really good stuff. You certainly don't have to be a Bela Lugosi fan to enjoy The Mysterious Mr. Wong.
Movie Review: Better Than You'd Think Despite Lugosi's Hungarian Accent
Summary: 3 Stars
The 1935 Monogram Pictures' release "The Mysterious Mr. Wong," with Bela Lugosi and Wallace Ford, clearly didn't deserve any Oscars, but neither does director William Nigh's poverty-row crime thriller qualify as ghastly. This low-budget, black & white whodunit about a series of murders occurring in the Chinatown section of an anonymous metropolitan American city is incorrigibly xenophobic. Remember, when this movie came out, Americans harbored paranoid fears about the so-called `Yellow Peril' that Chinese immigrants represented as they poured into the west coast. Any multi-culturally minded liberals who partake of "The Mysterious Mr. Wong" are going to be not only appalled but also offended this movie's conspicuous, racially charged invective.
Clocking in at a meager 63 minutes, this melodrama never wears out its welcome. Prolific director William Nigh, who helmed 120 movies in a career spanning thirty-four years, and his writers keep things clicking. Lew Levenson adapted author Harry Stephen Keeler's story "The Twelve Coins of Confucius," and Nina Howatt penned the screenplay with James Herbuveaux contributing additional dialogue. Neither Howatt nor Herbuveaux wrote anything after "The Mysterious Mr. Wong," but the dialogue sounds pretty snappy, slang-riddled, but quotable. The action itself resembles a twelve chapter serial pared down to the bare essentials. Secret passageways, concealed doors, underground sanctums, exotic coins, and torture chambers permeate this yarn.
"The Mysterious Mr. Wong" opens with expository information from an encyclopedia about the fabled twelve coins of Confucius and how the person who possesses them will rule a province called Keelat. A newspaper story about a murder appears next. Indeed, newspaper accounts of homicides in Chinatown recur throughout the film. Three slayings occur in rapid succession in the first few minutes. The police believe that the Tongs are on the warpath. The first victim staggers out into a street and collapses. A man searches his body, finds a perforated coin, and plants a note with a Chinese letter on the corpse. The second victim has been hanged and hands rifle his pockets to acquire a coin. The third man is strangled as he sleeps--yes, he is strangled perhaps too quickly, but the Production Code censors might have forced Nigh to accelerate this lurid death scene--and hands plunder his body, extract the coin from a shoe and leave the usual note on his body. Meanwhile, agents of the Keelat province show up in town to thwart Mr. Wong. Phillip Tsang (E. Alyn Warren of "Chinatown Squad") heads up the operation. Eventually, Tsang crosses paths with Mr. Wong and Wong takes him hostage.
A cynical newspaper reporter, Jason Barton (Wallace Ford of "Freaks"), investigates these murders. The authorities are convinced that the Tongs are responsible. Barton disagrees in a news story, and his editor Steve Brandon (Lee Shumway of "The Lone Star Ranger"), packs him off to find a Chinaman named Wong. "Did you ever run into a Chinaman by the name of Wong?" Brandon inquires. "Have I ever run into any that ain't named Wong?" Barton retorts. Our journalistic hero ventures into Sam Toy's Laundry where he encounters an Irish cop, Officer 'Mac' McGillicuddy (Robert Emmett 0'Conner of "Picture Snatcher"), who seems to be the only policeman walking a beat in the district. He shares Barton's racism and refers to the Chinese as "monkeys." None of the other reporters are interested in the murder. Barton checks over the body and learns that Toy died with a pencil in his hand. A breeze blows through the laundry when Mac opens the door and Barton finds a message written in Chinese. He visits the herb shop of Mr. Lysee (Bela Lugosi), but Lysee plays dumb when Barton quizzes him. Barton visits a nearby university where Professor Chan Fu (Luke Chan) works as a translator. Lysee sends one of his minions to steal the note from Barton, but Barton eludes him. Later, Barton ransacks Toy's laundry and finds the last coin, but an assailant gets the drop on Barton and steals the last coin. When Barton recovers, he learns another Chinaman has died. "Say, this is getting monotonous," Barton complains, "I'm supposed to bring in real live news, the best I can do is run down dead Chinamen."
Later, Barton and the newspaper switchboard operator, Peg (Arlene Judge of "Flying Devils"), have dinner in a restaurant and Barton discovers that the man who stole the coin from him is trying to return it. This man dies in the booth next to Barton and Peg. Afterward, Mr. Wong's murderous minions capture Barton and Peg. Eventually, Wong takes them to his underground torture chamber where he plans to stick bamboo shafts up Peg's finger nails unless the reticent Barton surrenders the last coin. Just before the torture commences, Wong and company leave our hero and heroine alone long enough for Barton to find a convenient telephone and call his boss. "I'm somewhere back of old Lysee's herb shop. It's a matter of life and death. There's a secret panel on the back of the counter. You better come well heeled. These babies don't play with marbles."
Nigh was no stranger to directing movies about Asians with white actors impersonated Orientals. He directed all four Boris Karloff mysteries in the "Mr. Wong" franchise: "Mr. Wong, Detective" (1938), "The Mystery of Mr. Wong" (1939), "The Fatal Hour" a.k.a "Mr. Wong at Headquarters" (1940), and "Doomed to Die" (1940). Later, Nigh directed Lugosi again in "Black Dragons" during 1942.
Of course, "Dracula" star Bela Lugosi was atrociously miscast as Mr. Wong with his obvious Hungarian accent. More than likely, Monogram cast Lugosi because Universal had cast Bela's biggest rival Boris Karloff in their 1932 epic "The Mask of Fu Manchu." Nevertheless, Bela delivers his lines with reasonable credibility and doesn't bump into the furniture. He looks pretty sinister as an Asian villain and he is up to his ears in intrigue and murder. "The Mysterious Mr. Wong" wallows in racial prejudice that was part and parcel of its time. Nevertheless, it still ranks as an entertaining B-movie.
Movie Review: A Mystery Story with Comedy
Summary: 2 Stars
Confucius was the most famous of all the sages of China and lived in Changtung province. Should any one man possess all twelve coins he would gain extraordinary power in the province of Keelat. The film begins when a man falls on the street, and another runs up to pick his pockets. It is a mysterious killing in Chinatown. Three high-binders present their coins to Mr. Wong. Is it his fate to rule Keelat? A reporter is sent to Chinatown to search for Mr. Wong. He visits the scene of the last murder. [Is he tampering with evidence?] Wong allows no excuse for failure. [Was it faulty orders?] "Make it look like an accident." [Does Bela Lugosi speak Chinese with an accent?] The Professor reads about the Golden Coins of Confucius on that laundry ticket.
The reporter uses a trick out of "The Front Page". Some of the scenes are still funny. When Foo Wong hears a noise he shoots through a curtain with his .32 revolver, but no one is there. Then another body falls on the street. A relative of Sam Toy shows up to read that slip of paper. Will it help China? "Maybe." Will someone stumble onto something? The clunky script drops a coin for the reporter. The incidents are more comic than scary. Things start to drag. Will he wish he never interfered in the affairs of Wong? Will they find a phone? Will Officer MacGillicuddy find a clue? Will the police arrive in time? You know there will be a happy ending to what was meant to be a scary mystery. [So what became of those twelve coins?]
That story about the twelve coins is a parable. Anyone who possesses all the coin of a realm already has extraordinary powers in politics and banking. That is why the portrait of a ruler is placed on coins or currency. [The Chinese invented paper money.] There is little magic in a handful of coins by themselves. There was a similar "Sherlock Holmes" story where a man tried to collect all the items in a set. Aside from its exotic setting in Chinatown, it is a classic morality play where an evil man triumphs for a while until he gets justice.