Director: William Nigh
Year:  1934
Rating: 4.0

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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.