In Boris Karloff’s final outing as detective James Lee Wong, he is persuaded by reporter Bobbie Long (Marjorie Reynolds) to investigate the murder of shipping magnate Cyrus Wentworth. All appearances are against young Dick Fleming (William Stelling), who is the son of Wentworth’s chief rival, Paul Fleming (Guy Usher), but nevertheless engaged to Wentworth’s daughter …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Doomed to Die</em> (1940)”
A policeman who has been working undercover investigating smuggling is found murdered, and detective James Lee Wong (Boris Karloff) helps police captain Bill Street (Grant Withers) to track down their friend’s killer(s). Marjorie Reynolds is very good as reporter Bobbie Long, and the rest of the supporting cast does well with their parts. This is …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Fatal Hour</em> (1940)”
An early entry in the 24-picture Range Busters series, Trailing Double Trouble has the three amigos — Crash, Dusty, and Alibi (Ray “Crash” Corrigan, John “Dusty” King, and Max “Alibi” Terhune) — dealing themselves in when a man in a buckboard is attacked by a gang. Though the man dies, he leaves behind his baby, …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Trailing Double Trouble</em> (1940)”
A young woman visiting Spain with a skydiving team is recruited to recover a missing atomic device that is desired by the Chinese and apparently in the hands of a notorious international criminal, but she soon hears many different stories from the competing parties. There are lots of twists in this lighthearted entertainment that is …
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 …
