Mr. Wong, Detective (1938)

Very Cool!!!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff) investigates the death of the president of a chemical manufacturing company and finds the trail leads to foreign agents. Asian detectives were all the rage in the '30s, with Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto both successful franchises at Fox. Poverty Row studio Monogram throws their hat into the ring with the Mr. Wong series starring Boris Karloff.Karloff's screen presence is the movie's primary selling point. Grant Withers plays the clichéd police detective who spends the whole movie barking at everybody and being annoying. Weaselly Lucien Prival plays one of the bad guys. There's something about this actor that always creeped me out. Poor production values and an unimpressive supporting cast puts this one well below the standards of the Chan and Moto series. But Boris Karloff and a decent mystery make it worth checking out.

This was the first of a modest series of Monogram films to star horror heavyweight Boris Karloff as an Asian sleuth, most likely to try and capitalize off the highly successful Charlie Chan saga from Fox. As a Karloff fan myself, he was my sole reason to take the plunge with this series and this film is pretty much an average affair. The British Boris doesn't seem authentic at playing a Chinese detective, and I had a difficult time buying into him as such with his blackened, slicked-back hair-comb. The plot itself is intriguing enough, with Mr. Wong trying to find out how a poison gas is killing people, and who's the mastermind behind it. I've read that MR. WONG, DETECTIVE is the "best" of this bunch, which leaves me concerned as to what may lie ahead. ** out of ****

Mr. Wong, Detective, is a standard fare B-movie that is delightful owing to the work of Boris Karloff. One does have to stretch one's sense of disbelief to see Karloff as an oriental but what dominates is Karloff's urbane humanity. It has been widely commented that in private life Karloff was gentle and engaging. It's my guess that Karloff here is mostly acting as himself, slightly stooped, charming, and witty. As such it is a testament to his ability as an actor that he could appear in so many villainous roles. As Mr. Wong one see Karloff as one's cultured uncle, full of good cheer, common sense, and abundant with decency. I only wish that it had been Karloff's better fortune to have acted in more diverse roles giving his range and appeal a wider audience. As he was much beloved in the Hollywood community perhaps Karloff didn't do so badly after all.As for the movie itself one requires a rather open sense of credulity. A series of partners in a chemical company are being murdered with poison gas and the police are at wit's end trying to determine the how, why, and who of the matter. Mr. Wong is called in early in the game and begins to pick out the pieces, literally, to the solution of the mystery. Grant Withers is the detective captain, Street, on the case and he lends the movie it's deepest dead spots. He is a loud, blustery, nincompoop of a detective, and in way over his head. If he is meant to lend comic relief, or to provide a dopey foil to the brilliance of Mr. Wong, I would have preferred a characterization not quite so annoying. There are other nefarious characters skulking about, providing red-herring dead ends, and a few twists a turns of the plot. In the end Mr. Wong identifies the killer and Street hauls him annoyingly away.Mr. Wong, Detective is a nice addition for film buffs and a fine example of the film work of Boris Karloff.

As a fan of, and having seen all of the available Charlie Chan films, I was curious to sample another take on the genre, with "Mr. Wong, Detective" as my first sampling of the Wong series. I found the movie to have both similarities and differences to the Chan mysteries.As far as similarities go, the first and most obvious is the casting of a non Oriental in the lead role; Boris Karloff does a credible job as Detective James Lee Wong, even though one must stretch belief to accept the characterization.The story itself involves the inventor of a poison gas formula seeking revenge on three partners of the Dayton Chemical Company who conspire to cut him out of the profits from his invention. As with the Chan films, red herrings galore are introduced to cast suspicion in different directions. Only the exacting patience and precision of the title detective it seems, will uncover the real killer. Patience indeed is needed, as Police Captain Sam Street (Grant Withers) constantly jumps to conclusions based on clues that unfold with the investigation. His portrayal is almost over the top as he belts out commands and virtually harasses everyone he questions, including girlfriend Myra Ross (Maxine Jennings), who's secretary to Simon Dayton, President of the Dayton Chemical Company and the film's first victim.Probably the major difference to the Charlie Chan films is the lack of comic relief, as provided by Number #1,2 and 3 Sons, and in the case of the Monogram Chan films beginning in 1944, that of chauffeur Birmingham Brown as portrayed by Mantan Moreland. This being a Monogram, the film does move more slowly than the better Chan's, and the Monogram Chan films in turn are considered inferior to the Twentieth Century Fox series.Monogram would eventually go on to retread the secret gas formula plot in two subsequent Charlie Chan movies, 1945's "The Jade Mask" starring Sidney Toler, and 1948's "Docks of New Orleans" with Roland Winters, both films rated in the lower third of the Chan canon. Both "Mr. Wong, Detective" and "Docks of New Orleans" at least come up with clever ways that the murderer finds to administer the poison gas that claims its' victims.Which brings me to the most glaring plot hole in "Mr. Wong, Detective". Early in the film, inventor Carl Roemer (John St. Polis) barges into Simon Dayton's office brandishing a handgun and demanding that Dayton return to him the poison gas formula, as if he would not have kept notes on such an important invention. Yet Roemer uses the very same poison gas to exact his revenge - someone wasn't paying attention!