Friday, April 13, 2007

Movie review - "The Mysterious Mr Wong" (1934) **

A crappy Monogram film but not without charm and it certainly has strengths, chiefly Bela Lugosi as a Chinese storekeeper who is secretly killing people in order to collect twelve coins that will enable him to rule the world... well, not the world but a section of it. On his trail is a wisecracking 30s newspaperman (Wallace Ford) and his switchboard operator girlfriend (Arline Judge).

There's an Irish cop, various Chinese try to drop things on Ford, Lugosi wears a Fu Manchu moustache and has a sexy daughter to match, Ford may be a poor man's Lee Tracy but I started to enjoy him after a while and he has an engaging chemistry with the lovely Judge, and the two are tied up to a chair by Lugosi at the end. Oh and it doesn't go for long after an hour.

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