This is the last of the Mr. Wong films made by Monogram. This time Boris Karloff does not appear, and the role of 'James Lee Wong' is played by the 35 year-old Keye Luke, and he is called 'Jimmy' in the film. Keye Luke was a Chinese who was born in China but grew up in Seattle. He appeared in many Hollywood films, and was 'a natural' on screen. Frankly, he was very good at any role he was chosen to play. Naturally, it is a very different kind of Mr. Wong film with the Chinese detective being an energetic young man. Monogram had just about milked the Hugh Wiley Collier's series as dry as a bone by now, so that they were essentially left with only the name Mr. Wong. Even in the previous film DOOMED TO DIE (1940, see my review), which still had Boris Karloff, Ralph Bettison (spelled Bettinson in the credits) had written an original story for the film, and here he does so again. Both stories were very strong, and the films very good. Another genuine Oriental appears in this film, who almost looks Chinese, though in fact her father was Japanese and her mother was an ethnic Hawaiian. Her real name was Lotus Pearl Shibata, but her professional name was Lotus Long. Because everyone assumed she was Chinese, she used that to avoid American internment as a Japanese during World War II! In fact, Lotus Long appeared in two earlier Mr. Wong films, THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG (1939), AND MR. WONG IN CHINATOWN (1940), but as her parts were supporting roles she was not a prominent cast member. Lotus Wong had a strange ability to look suspicious without any apparent effort, which is a good trait to have if you are appearing in mystery films when the viewers are not sure who the good guys are and who the bad guys are yet. Alas, the tedious Grant Withers remains as the Detective Inspector to the very end of this series, shouting and being irritating as usual. This film is probably the best and the most interesting of the series. It features newsreel footage of camel trains in Central Asia, and the story concerns an expedition to the far west of China to search for the tomb of a Ming emperor (nonsense, of course, since no Ming emperor was ever buried there, but then this is just a movie), and an ancient scroll buried with him in his coffin which reveals the location of 'The Temple of the Eternal Fire'. That is not as mystical as it sounds, because the vertical and eternally lit flame is said to be composed of 'oil' (for which read natural gas) and to betray the location of 'the largest oil field in the world' which will benefit China in defending itself against invaders. (In none of the Mr. Wong films are the invaders and occupiers of China called the Japanese, and they remain nameless, though of course the entire public knows.) So this story involves international spies and all sorts of villains, murders, and the usual complex mystery plots.
Review of Phantom of Chinatown
