The Mr. Wong series took on what I consider its definitive form with this, the third entry in the series. Marjorie Reynolds joins the regular cast as reporter Bobby Logan, always ready to bend rules to get a story and also eager to champion those she thinks wrongfully accused. She and Wong’s friend Captain Street …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Mr. Wong in Chinatown</em> (1939)”
The last of Dorothy Page’s starring westerns for Grand National may be the best of the lot, as she seems more active throughout, making a daring escape at gunpoint and directly confronting the head crook, for example. Vince Barnett returns as comic relief, this time with a female counterpart. Milton Frome is rather lackluster as …
Mr. Wong (Boris Karloff) attends a party whose host (Morgan Wallace) is slain in the midst of a charades-type game. The victim had feared for his life after arranging for a rare gem to be smuggled out of China. The slain collector’s wife (Dorothy Tree) and private secretary (Craig Reynolds) are suspected, as they were …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Mystery of Mr. Wong</em> (1939)”
One of the strongest entries in the Charlie Chan series sees the detective (Warner Oland) racing to Germany (part of the trip aboard the Hindenburg) and the 1936 Olympics to catch up with a murderer and a stolen aeronautical invention before the latter can be sold to sinister foreign buyers. Two sons lend a hand …
Read the full post →“<em>Charlie Chan at the Olympics</em> (1937)”
Before the Charlie Chan series moved to Monogram in the 1940s, that little studio had its own series about a Chinese detective, James Lee Wong, who had starred in short stories in the magazine Collier’s. The first five of the six movies star Boris Karloff as the sleuth, an expert on many things, including Chinese …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Mr. Wong, Detective</em> (1938)”
Petty car thieves stumble into a kidnapping and decide to try to nab the ransom for themselves. The kidnappers are clever enough to figure out how to track down their “rivals,” however, and the two groups end up headed for a collision. The unraveling of the crimes holds the viewer’s interest while awaiting the inevitable …
George Sanders ably handles the opposition in this story of intrigue in Damascus in the early years of World War II, with Nazi agents seeking to bring the Arab tribes into the war on behalf of the Axis, and a journalist (Sanders), aided by an off-duty American diplomat (Robert Armstrong), seeking to stop them. Complicating …
Trapper Paul Lautrec (Edward Norris) is shot and framed for a string of fur robberies and killings, and it’s up to Mountie Rod Webb (Kirby Grant), aided by his faithful dog Chinook, to untangle the scheme. This is another entertaining programmer in the Monogram series starring Grant and Chinook. Recommended. Otto finds this one pleasing …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Wolf Hunters</em> (1949)”
An amnesiac with vague memories of killing someone is brought back to England from Africa, where his arrival sets in motion a chain of unusual events and harrowing crimes. His intrepid nurse eagerly investigates in order to find out the truth, despite discouragement from the private detective she has hired, while her sister draws closer …
Tex (Tex Ritter) and his pal Chili (Syd Saylor) drift down toward the Rio Grande country, apparently cowboys with no particular aim, though Tex has a reason for the trip — to visit and help out his brother (Forrest Taylor), a local lawman facing criticism for failing to put a stop to a cattle herd …
Read the full post →“<em>Headin’ for the Rio Grande</em> (1936)”
