The Mysterious Mr. Wong

If you like only big budget 'A' movies that provide the director, set designers, technicians and actors all the advantages that money can buy to make a decent flick, you shouldn't watch B programmers. And the Mysterious Mr. Wong is a B pic without apologies from Monogram. The small Poverty Row studios whose budgets permitted then to make only B movies, rented everything from actors to sound stages so they had to make their movies cheaply and quickly. Anyone can made a $60 million dollar film--even a 30 million dollar flick in today's dollars, and if it turns out to be anything less than a good film, the people responsible haven't talent. On the other hand, it took solid craftspeople to turn out an entertaining 6-reel B movie in a week or two for chump change. (If you ever need a hint to distinguish between A budget and B budget movies, look for ceilings in the settings. Eliminating ceilings saved construction money and made lighting easier.) If I compare The Mysterious Mr. Wong with the better A movies, I give it a 6. If I compare it to the best of the B flicks, such as the Thin Man series (which earns a 9 from me), I'd award Mysterious Mr Wong an 8. Nina Howett banged out a script peppered with amusing dialogue, and the seemingly spontaneous Wallace Ford and Arline Judge do it up proud. Robert Emmett O'Connor always scores as the pudding-faced Irish cop with little in his noggin. Bela Lugosi, regardless of how ineptly he handled his career, remains one of the most striking and interesting performers ever on the screen---able to excel in operatic horror, comedy and drama roles. Versatile as he was, however, his acting talent didn't include a facility with accents. His Hungarian accent could only adapt to Central or Eastern Europeans characters. Still, his exotic quality triumphed over that sole limitation. William Nigh, one of the most competent B directors, keeps the pace crackling for all of the film's 65 minutes. Even the camera work is smart. Yes, the script is racist: the film's Chinese are inscrutable, untrustworthy and murderous (except the roles of Lotus Lee and her mother (?)) and Irish are thick-headed. But, as another reviewer noted, two young Chinese women turn their own back from Wallace Ford's character by replying in cultivated English to his condescending pidgin talk. The picture quality of the Alpha release is fine, but the sound is muddy.