Watch Phantom of Chinatown For Free

Too much of everything

Powerful

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I maintain that some very important conventions were worked out in 30s mysteries. The Charlie Chan series was instrumental in some of these, and this is the last of them. It incidentally has Charlie's son as the detective, the first Asian playing the character. The sensitivity to Chinese culture is no better than in the earlier movies, but that is a side issue for me. The wanted item here is a map to a vast oil deposit, discovered and stolen in the style of mummy movies.The interesting device is the use of a movie within the movie. The expedition had a filmmaker along whose filming gets mixed with conspiracy. The ancient scroll gets destroyed and converted to photographs.

The 1940 film is quite good in it's mood and theme. It is a detective film that keeps you engaged and moves in a fast pace. The film stars an Asian actor, Keye Luke and Mr Luke does a very fine job playing an alert intelligent detective that could be set in today's times. This was produced in the WW2 years and it is interesting to see that this film was made with many Asian actors. Sadly that would not continue with the anti-Asian hysteria of the war years. Mr Luke survived on with a long and memorable movie & TV career with his major role as the High Lama/teacher in TV's 'Kung-Fu'. IN this film a murder strikes during a lecture on the discovery of a lost Mongolian tomb. A scroll with a valuable secret is missing. It's up to Jimmy Wong and the Homicide Squad to find the killer and learn the tomb's secret. This was the last of the Mr Wong serials. Enjoy it.

No offense to Boris Karloff, who had previously played Mr. Wong, but this film shows how an "oriental" action-thriller can be improved by casting a gifted Chinese actor in the role. Keye Luke is handsome, charming, dashing, brave, clever, and just downright sexy as James Lee Wong, and he meets his perfect match in Lotus Long, the mysterious Chinese secretary of a famous Anglo-American archaeologist. The ending, which would have featured some romance between Luke and Long had they both been Caucasians, is still satisfying, as Luke shows his feelings for Long with his eyes and smile. Lee Tung Foo also deserves mention in a fun turn as Wong's servant. Of the many oriental-exploitation films of the era, this is perhaps the best, featuring some fine Asian art objects, superb set decoration, social commentary about Westerm archaeological appropriation of cultural treasures, unusual documentary footage of an expedition to Mongolia, and real Chinese people playing Chinese people. It's by no means an "A" picture, and seeing the star-god Shou depicted as a "god of vengeance" is silly, but "Phantom of Chinatown" deserves a better reputation than others of its ilk.

I have now seem four films of the "Mr.Wong" series and it seems obvious to me that, although they were plagued by very low budgets, this wasn't the main cause of their rapid decline in quality. No - it's the fact that the mysteries themselves (except for the original one, which was very clever) weren't very good, or presented in a way that would engage the viewer and give him a reason to care about the outcome. This one in particular is so forgettable and uninteresting that I defy anyone to remember even the most basic details about it five minutes after the picture is over. As for Keye Luke's casting in the title role, sure, it's good for authenticity, but what's going on here? Why doesn't Inspector Street recognize him at first? If he's playing a younger version of the character Boris Karloff portrayed, why didn't they also get a younger actor to play Street? How can one of them be approximately 20 years younger and the other one the same age as before? Not that it's something to keep you up at night. 0.5 out of 4 stars.