A series of murders happen in Chinatown. Newspaperman Wallace Ford isn't interested in covering a tong war, but he's assigned to the case, which cuts into his dating of switchboard operator Arline Judge. Bela Lugosi, who's playing Wong, is looking for the Twelfth Golden Coin of Confucius which, like all maguffins will let him rule the Chinese province of Keelat and kill tigers in the Scottish highlands.
It's pure pulp, with striking gongs, hordes of futile assassins, mazes and sliding passages beneath Chinatown, and Lugosi smiling jovially as he contemplates sticking bamboo splinters into Miss Judge's fingernails and setting them alight. Ford and Miss Judge banter poorly, and those who play ethnic Chinese like to talk in pidgin English. In fact, the only thing this movie seems to get right is the utter indifference the Caucasians exhibit towards half a dozen deaths in Chinatown.
I think it's possible that director William Nigh thought he was making a burlesque rather than ineptly directing a serious movie. However, if so, he directed the burlesque ineptly.
It's pure pulp, with striking gongs, hordes of futile assassins, mazes and sliding passages beneath Chinatown, and Lugosi smiling jovially as he contemplates sticking bamboo splinters into Miss Judge's fingernails and setting them alight. Ford and Miss Judge banter poorly, and those who play ethnic Chinese like to talk in pidgin English. In fact, the only thing this movie seems to get right is the utter indifference the Caucasians exhibit towards half a dozen deaths in Chinatown.
I think it's possible that director William Nigh thought he was making a burlesque rather than ineptly directing a serious movie. However, if so, he directed the burlesque ineptly.