Tonight's Movie: Dangerous to Know (1938) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

I very much enjoyed KING OF CHINATOWN (1939), the first film I watched from the new Anna May Wong Collection from Kino Lorber, so I dove into the next film in the set as soon as I could.

That movie is DANGEROUS TO KNOW (1938), and I think I liked it even more than KING OF CHINATOWN.

DANGEROUS TO KNOW reunites four actors from KING OF CHINATOWN: Wong, Akim Tamiroff, Anthony Quinn, and Roscoe Karns.

Tamiroff plays Steve Recka, an ex-con who's become such a powerful "fixer" that the wealthy and well connected celebrate his birthday.

Recka has what some delicately call a "hostess," beautiful Lan Ying (Wong), who is clearly his mistress -- though at one point he tells her to go home, which was apparently inserted into the script for propriety's sake.

At his birthday party Steve meets lovely Margaret Van Case (Gail Patrick), from a prominent but no longer wealthy family. He wants to marry her, both for her place in society and because of their shared interest in music, but in order to do so he puts into motion a plan to eliminate her fiance Phil (Harvey Stephens) as competition.

Meanwhile, Lan Ying suffers silently as she realizes she's being thrown over...

I really enjoyed this film, which has a great cast, including Lloyd Nolan as a police detective and Hedda Hopper as a snooty grande dame of society. Ellen Drew can be glimpsed in a single scene as a secretary.

It's a fast-paced 70 minutes which has punchy dialogue scripted by William R. Lipman and Horace McCoy, based on a novel and play by Edgar Wallace.

Wong, incidentally, was also in the Broadway production, and she's great here, beautiful and seemingly impassive, with emotional waters roiling underneath her graceful exterior.

Tamiroff and Patrick are also excellent, and Nolan and Karns add some levity from all the drama as fast-talking cops.

The film's conclusion is both surprising and satisfying. This is a very well-constructed little movie which is well worth seeing.

This Paramount Pictures film was directed by Robert Florey and filmed in black and white by Theodor Sparkuhl.

As was the case with KING OF CHINATOWN, Kino Lorber's Blu-ray is really lovely, with a great picture and sound. It's been a delight to discover these movies thanks to this set.

Extras consist of a commentary track by Samm Deighan and a gallery of trailers for three additional films available from Kino Lorber.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

Tweet