Director:
William Nigh
Year: 1934
Rating: 4.0
There isn't much good to say about this low budget
piece of Orientalism from Monogram Pictures, but I am still glad it is here
with us. To think that some 90 years ago, they knocked out this film probably
in less than a week to be the weak end of a double feature that probably no
one went to see on purpose and the filmmakers never thought it would see the
light of day again. But here it still survives up on YouTube. There is something
almost heroic about that. As un-PC as the Yellow Face films have become,
they are part of our cinematic history and culture - much less so but it
still lingers on today. In this case we get Bela Lugosi playing a Chinese
man, Mr. Wong, in as stereotyped manner as it gets - evil, the Fu Manchu
moustache, two-faced living in his ornate home with a torture chamber in
the basement. And listening to an actor with a thick Hungarian accent go
back and forth between Chinese pidgin English and the Hungarian accept is
a listening challenge to say the least.
How Lugosi got roped into this film is the real mystery. He was still making
solid films for Universal - The Black Cat in the same year - but more and
more low budget films were creeping into his work. Lugosi is one of the great
characters of Hollywood - what a strange life he led. One always forgets that
he was an actor with a reputation back in Europe - first in Hungary and then
Germany and photos of him back then are quite dashing. But his leftist political
leanings drove him out of Hungary and then Germany and he emigrated to the
USA. For his first decade here he did a lot of Hungarian theater, bits in
silent films and then got the break he needed - playing Dracula on Broadway.
This led to the film of course and for the next 20 years he was part of the
group of great horror actors that dominated films. His life careened out
of control and he became a morphine addict but kept on working. I always enjoy
him even if there are times I can barely understand him.
The film begins with a series of murders by unseen hands. All Chinese men
and all left with a note pinned to their chest. It isn't translated but I
assume it was not a Chinese takeout menu. Confucius - ya that Confucius -
gave out 12 gold coins to his friends right before he died and legend says
that if these coins are collected in one place, that person will be given
great power. Quite believable. That they all happen to be in Chinatown perhaps
not so much. There is only one more coin to be found and Mr. Wong will be
doing a happy dance. In the meantime he is by day a humble dispenser of medicines
in a shabby shop - well the entire set looks to be made of cardboard - but
a secret door leads to his sumptuous home where his minion killers rest up
between murders and his niece lives.
She is played by Lotus Long who I come across from time to time in films
in the Mr. Moto series or the Mr. Wong series (different Mr. Wong) and perhaps
most famously as Tokyo Rose in Tokyo Rose (1946). I always like seeing her
because at least in the films I have seen with her, she never goes into stereotype
speech. Considering she was born in New Jersey that is a good thing. But interestingly,
she was actually of Japanese ancestry but because of her stage name everyone
thought she was Chinese. Which came in handy when we started rounding up
Japanese citizens and interning them. She escaped that. She isn't in the
film that much actually, but I thought I would bring her up anyways.
Now there is a wise-cracking journalist (Wallace Ford) looking in to these
deaths but he is as irritating as a case of the scabies and as dim as a low-watt
bulb. Mr. Wong's minions keep trying to kill him but he isn't even smart enough
to realize it. All in all a bad film but it will still be here long after
we are gone. As it should be.