mark.waltz Have Tong wars gone out of style? Not according to the House of Wong, here with a Hungarian accent. "The Wrong Mr. Wong" an old friend of mine used to refer to this as, and indeed in comparison to good guy Boris Karloff's heroic Chinese detective (complete with British accent and lisp), Bela Lugosi's evil villain is closer to Karloff's Fu Manchu, or perhaps several of Lugosi's serial villains. This doesn't have the opulence of MGM's "The Mask of Fun Manchu", but is equally as tacky.Searching for the twelve coins of Confucius, Lugosi is as mad as the long nailed Fun Manchu, whether it be Karloff's or predecessor Warner Oland who by now had moved to the right side of the law as Charlie Chan. But when non-Asian actors play Asian characters, there's bound to be stereotyping and offense characteristics no matter if they are good or bad. Lugosi is fortunately mussing the broken Asian version that Oland, Karloff and much later both Christopher Lee and Peter Sellers would utilize, but the fact that he is so obviously Eastern European rather than Asian makes his performance all the worse.Adding comedy into the mix is Wallace Ford as a really idiotic reporter who seems to find more trouble than information for an article. A scene where he keeps walking into near death situations is played for laughs like a a Scooby Doo cartoon. The typical pompous but equally idiotic Irish cop adds more eye rolling, if innocent laughs. And try not to hear yourself say Mr. Wong's Tong Gong over and over when Ford's rather obnoxious female companion (Arline Judge) overhears the sound on the darkened middle of the night streets. Lugosi fans will have fun here as it is the epitome of everything that Lugosi could do to bring even the cheapest of his programmers to the lowest of the low is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Creaky pacing, wretched dialog, ridiculously dumb law enforcers and a one dimensional leading character makes this watchable nonsense and a definite lesson as to why old style Hollywood racism is just the worst example of prejudice at its most absurd. If you play a drinking game with this one and take a shot every time Lugosi's mustache dances, you'll be drunk within the first reel.

MartinHafer I am a fan of Bela Lugosi but I also realize that he often appeared in cheesy films. However, much of this cheese was actually a lot of fun to watch despite the low budgets and silly writing. Sadly, however, this film is neither well made nor is it cheesy fun--just amazingly dull.The film begins with the old Monogram Studios logo--the one with the monorails and zeppelins. Despite this cool start, I also immediately realized that because it was made by a so-called "Poverty Row" studio, that the budget and overall quality would be suspect.Wallace Ford is a rather obnoxious reporter (a standard cliché of the day) who is assigned to Chinatown due to some suspicious murders. At the heart of it all is Mr. Wong--but exactly WHO Wong is no one seems to know. Considering the film stars Lugosi, it doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure it probably is him!! However, who thought that a Hungarian with a heavy accent would make a good Chinese-American?! And who would have thought that Lugosi actually looked and sounded MORE Chinese than his motley group of henchmen. They all sported Chinese-style clothes but looked about as Chinese as Mae West!! The film does have some killing and tossing of knives and even some bamboo shoots being inserted under the nails. Yet, because the acting is so flat, the script so limp that even these crazy story elements can't breathe life into this soggy biscuit. Perhaps the movie would have been better if Lugosi had actually played twins--then maybe two Wongs could have gotten it right! I should be ashamed of myself.A final note--The DVD version of this film I saw was from Passport Video and was of very dubious quality (it came in "The Bela Lugosi Box"). This company specializes in releasing public domain films and consistently does nothing to clean up the prints. This one was almost unwatchable due to terrible sound and no captioning. Also, Passport imprints their logo at the bottom right corner of the screen--which seems like a lot of nerve considering they didn't pay for the film!! Public domain AND emblazoning their name across it like they made the film?! Gimme a break. See if you can find a different and cleaner version.

Athanatos I'm not sure whom of five people to hate: the director? one or more of the people given the writing credits? In any event, this is one of those movies that fairly actively insults the viewer by having the ostensible hero repeatedly be implausibly foolish -- as if drunk through-out the entire story. On top of this, the movie is awash with offensive ethnic stereotypes, and with obviously Caucasian actors pretending to be Chinese by looking filthy and acting sub-human. The Chinatown is made to seem as if it were literally over-run with villains, so that Wong's henchmen are to be found on every balcony and in most doorways. The banter between the hero and his love interest is not so much a volley of witticisms as it is an inept logomachy.I paused the movie repeatedly, wanting to recover from sequences of stupidity before slogging onward.

Snow Leopard It has some good sequences, but overall "The Mysterious Mr. Wong" doesn't really live up to its promise. With Bela Lugosi starring as a shadowy villain, a decent plot idea that involves artifacts from ancient history, and a couple of interesting-looking settings, it had the makings of a good B-feature, at least as long as you are willing to overlook some stereotypes and the like for the sake of entertainment.Lugosi's character is interesting, as is his hideout, and Lugosi also gets the chance to play two different sides of his character. The script seems to miss a lot of opportunities, though, because the character really never comes to life as well as it could have. Wallace Ford actually gets the best opportunities, as the reporter who, along with Arline Judge, tries to contend with Wong's plots. Ford does pretty well in the role, and he has plenty of energy.The story likewise holds some possibilities that are never realized. There are some fairly good sequences with the characters inside Wong's secret lair, but at other times the story doesn't always make a lot of sense, and the interesting ideas involved in Wong's quest for the coins are mostly mentioned only in passing. It's all right as light entertainment, but it could have been more.