Before watching any of the series where Boris Karloff plays Chinese detective Mr. Wong, I was worried it would be like the kind of yellowface characters parodied in Murder by Death.  In that film, Peter Sellers plays a character clearly patterned on Charlie Chan.  He says of a moose head on the wall through which Truman Capote is watching the characters: “Look! Cow on wall talk!”.  In response to this, Capote goes on this tirade: “Moose!  The moose, you imbecile!  Say your pronouns!”

1939’s Mr. Wong in Chinatown is the third installment in the Karloff series.  He still speaks without an accent and with grammatically perfect English, though many of the other Chinese people in the picture don’t fare as well, those being actors truly of that race and not in yellowface.

As the title implies, we’re going to be spending a fair amount of time on various sets in locales that are supposed to be in Chinatown.  They are small and sparsely decorated sets, given this is the product of Monogram, a threadbare operation.

The mystery concerns the death of Lotus Long, who happened to be at Karloff’s house and waiting to see him when she was shot in the neck by a poison dart by a mysterious figure lurking outside an open window. Her death throes last long enough to write on a piece of paper “Captain J”.  How I wish it read something preposterous like “The person responsible for my death, which I am about to disclose here…oh, please excuse my poor penmanship, but this poison really painful…anyway, the killer is…”  And I was hoping she would instead draw attention to “Captain D’s”, a fast seafood chain that I’m not sure exists anymore.  I like to think plan B in case the poison didn’t kill her was to clog her arteries through deep fried clam strips.  Also, I was wondering why Karloff didn’t recognize her as the maid from the previous installment in this series.  It is like Monogram couldn’t afford more to keep more than a dozen actors on payroll.

Another actor has appeared in three consecutive entries, and that is Grant Withers as a loudmouth police detective who only serves to hastily jump to incorrect conclusions.  In the first picture, he was making time with Maxine Jennings.  This time, it is a reporter played by Marjorie Reynolds.  She’s OK, but I keep hoping they’ll bring back the grounded and unflappable Jennings.

This third film has a bit more of a noir feel to it than the others so far.  Reynolds searches Long’s apartment for clues and then hides in a closet when a mysterious masked figure enters the apartment to do the same.  Once Reynolds has turned out the light, there are long shadows across the room and the ceiling, a trademark of noir. 

This same scene introduces a bit of surrealism, though it is partly due to rather haphazard editing.  There is an abrupt cut to dwarf Angelo Rossitto looking up through bars, as if somebody had accidentally spliced a prison drama by way of Buñuel or Fellini into the print.  He is looking up through the window of the room he occupies in the basement of the same building as Long’s apartment, but that isn’t immediately clear.  He will briefly make an appearance with other actors when he comes up to the apartment while Karloff and the police are investigating, in a moment that feels downright Lynchian.  I don’t know how else to describe a mute dwarf in darkface who is supposed to be Chinese but, with his mustache, more closely resembles the Hollywood template for gypsies.

That is the kind of weirdness and racial insensitivity I expect from a film of the period in which Mr. Wong in Chinatown was made.  Still, I believe credit needs to be given to Karloff for a portrayal of a Chinese man where he doesn’t even attempt an accent.  Also, there is some dialogue concerning the dialects of Chinese being so different as to fundamentally be different languages, and I thought that was a nice attempt at some sort of insight into the nation’s cultures.  In the end, I’m not sure if I am cutting the film too much slack or still being too harsh on it for the elements which are inevitable for the time when it was made.  One thing I do know, I may be a tad too sensitive myself when I see a vehicle belonging to the Yellow Cab Company in a shot and I take umbrage for a second, mistaking the “yellow” part of the name as a slur against Asians. At that point, I have to paraphrase a Polanski film and tell myself, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Mr. Wong in Chinatown.”

Dir: William Nigh

Starring Boris Karloff, Marjorie Reynolds, Grant Withers

Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray set Mr. Wong Collection