Film review: Mr. Wong in Chinatown (1939)

Regular readers will know my feelings about Boris Karloff (born William Henry Pratt of Camberwell) and how underappreciated he is.  Can he survive appearing in yellowface as Chinese detective James Lee Wong in a series of B-pictures?  Answer: yes, actually.  While the makeup is no doubt offensive, the character is no Mickey-Rooney-in-Breakfast at Tiffany's horrorshow

largely because Karloff, much like Sidney Toler with Charley Chan, imbues his character with both good humor and dignity.  He doesn't even attempt a "Chinglish" accent, but merely sounds his actual English self with carefully enunciated words.  This is just as well, because he has to act with actual Asian actors, and I would hope it was embarrassing enough with the eye makeup.  Those actors don't exactly get big roles, however, starting with the woman who comes to see him in his house at the beginning of the film only to be dispatched promptly by a poison dart to the neck launched through a window while she's waiting for him to come in from the other room.  She just has time to write "Captain J" before she expires.  Wong calls the police, who seem to know (and respect) him, and his Lestrade, an irascible inspector called Bill Street, soon shows up.  They are in the next room where Wong is showing Street the wrist-mounted dart gun that he owns that he believes is of the type used for the murder, when a woman breaks in through his window.  She turns out to be one of those sassy spitfire girl-reporters who proliferate 30s and 40s movies, and who is a particular bane of Street's, Bobbie Logan.  She seems to know more than the cops, though, including the fact that the corpse is an actually a Chinese princess called Lin Hwa, who just arrived on a ship called The Maid of the Orient, captained by a certain Captain Jaime.  Surely he is the Captain J of the note?  Well, Wong and Street pay the ship a visit (but only after (a) getting Lin Hwa's San Francisco apartment address off Bobbie, but also (b) handcuffing her to a chair (!) so she can't follow and report everything.  A visit to the ship doesn't reveal anything, but afterwards a shadowy figure pays a visit to Captain Jaime and it's clear that neither of them are exactly innocent.  Meanwhile, Bobbie has broken free and beats Wong and Street to the apartment.  She breaks in, but shortly afterwards, another shadowy figure also breaks in, and in hiding from him Bobbie gets knocked out by a suitcase falling off a shelf.  When the men arrive they discover her, but also Lin Hwa's maid, and shortly afterwards, a mute Chinese man with dwarfism.  He is able to communicate to them that the person who just broke in had a mask and glasses and had a car parked in the alley.  Our three protagonists leave, but leave the door guarded and instructions to the maid and "the little guy" to stay put.  She does, but he climbs out of the window.  And later, when they return, the maid is found also dead by dart. The plot thickens when Wong contacts Tong members in Chinatown who reveal that Lin Hwa was on a mission on behalf of her brother, who seems to be some kind of warlord, in order to buy aeroplanes for his army, and it turns out that the figure that met with Captain Jaime is a different Captain J- Jackson, this time, who was selling the 'planes to Lin Hwa and has, as he puts it, been left holding the bag.  Also involved is her banker, Mr. Davidson.  Various things happen (including Bobbie saving Wong's life by freeing him from a booby-trapped taxi cab) before a group of armed men (including the two captains) break into Mr. Davidson's house (after shooting his dogs first!) to try to get the rest of Lin Hwa's money.  Davidson says that Wong might know who has it because he was investigating who forged signatures (in English and Chinese) on the bank drafts.  So Wong is called by Davidson at gunpoint and asked to come over.  Before he goes, however, he calls Street and asks him to follow him to Davidson's house because he's solved the case.  Before Street can get there, however, Wong and Davidson are taken to the ship, which is about to set sail.  Will Street and Bobbie get there before Wong is dumped in the middle of the sea?  And who killed Lin Hwa and her maid (given that both Captains are mad about it because it got in the way of their scam (their aeroplanes don't really exist))?  Was it the little guy, or has he been bumped off too?  You'll have to watch it and see.
Is this a good movie?  Not really, but it's also not bad at all, and the main actors (except the villains) are very appealing, especially Bobbie (Marjorie Reynolds).  It would be perfect post-teatime viewing on BBC 2 on a Winter's weekday, when it gets dark early.  It's also, makeup aside, a very optimistic view of race-relations in mid 20th century California.  All of the "Chinese" characters are treated respectfully, even the "little guy".  Maybe we'll check out some of the others in the series.