"Mr. Wong in Chinatown" by William Nigh (1939)

It seems that in the late 1930s Monogram Pictures were on a roll with these Mr.Wong movies - low budgeted but intriguing enough, with added star presence of wonderful Boris Karloff, there were so popular that audience got no less than five parts in only six years. Just in case you perhaps doubt the decision that Chinese detective was played by obviously British actor who towers above everybody around, when Karloff backed out of them, the series stopped.

This third part is far cry from simple beginnings when everything seems to have been filmed on a parking lot and character of Mr.Wong was submissive and servile towards policemen - now we have quite a lot exterior scenes and Mr.Wong not only walks around with a walking stick like some aristocrat but is extremely politely referred to by everybody.

In fact, he is equally at home in luxurious homes of wealthy bankers and in dangerous China town, where locals treat him with respect. When at the beginning of the movie, some unknown female visitor gets killed in his house, Mr.Wong gets involved in a crime case that might have perhaps a little too much characters spread around and its quite complicated to distinguish them all from one another, specially as most of these men wear exactly same clothes, fedora hats and talk to each other in barking voices (at least I had problems with telling who is who). Basically the only one I could recognise immediately was Mr.Wong because he looks so different from everybody else. The story meanders a bit left and right, with humorous couple of stressed policeman Grant Withers and pushy journalist Marjorie Reynolds as comic relief but our attention is always focused on Karloff since he is the only one with calm presence and brain. The ending is surprising, since every Mr.Wong mystery always zooms on least expected suspect and even though these movies are at this point ancient, I can never guess the murderer. Enjoyable for 1930s standards, though hardly very memorable.