Tonight's Movie: Mr. Wong, Detective (1938) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Kino Lorber Studio Classics has just released a five-film Mr. Wong Collection on Blu-ray.

The Mr. Wong movie series was based on a character created for Collier's Magazine by Hugh Wiley. Boris Karloff plays Mr. Wong, an eminent detective whose assistance is regularly welcomed by Police Captain Sam Street (Grant Withers).

I just watched the first film in the set, MR. WONG, DETECTIVE (1938), and enjoyed it. This 69-minute Monogram Pictures film is ultra low budget, but it has a certain creaky charm, anchored by Karloff as the interesting title character.

As the movie begins, Simon Dayton (John Hamilton), a chemical manufacturer who fears for his life, asks Mr. Wong for help.

Mr. Wong agrees, but Dayton dies before Wong can come to his aid. Wong does, of course, eventually solve the mystery, which involves poison gas in small glass balls which mysteriously shatter... The story whips by so quickly I'd be going into spoiler territory if I said anything further.

Karloff is excellent as the intelligent, placid Wong, who remains calm even when his life is threatened by a dangerous trio. He's an intriguingly different personality, and I look forward to getting to know his character better when reviewing the other films in the collection.

Withers is somewhat belligerent as Captain Street, but compared to some other slow-witted movie series police detectives, he's not that bad.

I especially enjoyed Maxine Jennings as Street's lively girlfriend; unfortunately this was her only entry in the series. She only made one more film.

The cast also includes Evelyn Brent, George Lloyd, Lucien Prival, and Lee Tong Foo.

The movie was directed by William Nigh, with black and white cinematography by Harry Neumann.

MR. WONG, DETECTIVE was clearly on a shoestring budget, with bare bones sets and a cast largely comprised of relatively unfamiliar faces. However, the mystery in the screenplay by Houston Branch is fairly clever, and the story and Karloff are enough to make it work. As a "B" movie fan I thought this was just the ticket for an hour of so of relaxing viewing.

Kino Lorber's two-disc set has three films on Disc 1, with the last two movies on Disc 2. The set comes in an attractive cardboard slipcase. The lone disc extra for the set is a commentary track on MR. WONG, DETECTIVE with Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire.

The Blu-ray features a brand-new master from a 2K scan of the fine grain film. MR. WONG, DETECTIVE has some print flaws which I assume are inherent to the material, but I thought they were minor; the print is highly watchable. I thought it rather wonderful that a Monogram "B" (or maybe "C"?) film is now available in such good shape.

As a closing note, there was a sixth Mr. Wong film, PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN (1940), which starred Keye Luke rather than Karloff; Withers returned as Sam Street. It's too bad Luke only made one Mr. Wong film, as I really enjoy him. Luke is said by some sites to have been the first Asian actor playing a lead Asian movie role in the U.S.

While PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN is not in the set, I do happen to have a copy I recorded a few years ago from Turner Classic Movies, and I'll be checking it out in the future along with the rest of the Wong films in Kino Lorber's collection.

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

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