Mr. Wong, Detective

1938

Adventure / Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 40%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 40% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.0/10 10 1398 1.4K

poison detective investigation murder meditative mysterious

Director

William Nigh Photo
William Nigh

Top cast

Wheaton Chambers Photo
Wheaton Chambers as Chemistry Lab Director
Lester Dorr Photo
Lester Dorr as Coroner
George DeNormand Photo
George DeNormand as John
Lee Tung Foo Photo
Lee Tung Foo as Tchin
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
628.21 MB
960*720
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
1 hr 8 min
Seeds ...
1.14 GB
1440*1080
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
1 hr 8 min
Seeds 3

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by psychoren2002 7 / 10

Boris Karloff is Chinese!!!

In the great tradition of Chinese detectives as Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, Boris Karloff's Mr. Wong was a solid addition to that venerable kind of films. Is really difficult to think in Karloff as a Chinese person, but the British actor delivers a solid performance, if you can dig his weird accent. The plot is simple, the strange murders are against logic, but Mr. Wong's patience and intelligence can solve the mystery. The other actors are far below Karloff, but the overall fell of the movie is candid and likable. Another completely different Mr. Wong was played before by Bela Lugosi, a villain, but this detective deserves your interest if you are a fan of the genre.
Reviewed by gridoon 6 / 10

Slow, but clever.

Considering its age (almost 65 years old), this movie has held up reasonably well. Granted, it is a bit slow and dull (it runs only 69 minutes but it feels MUCH longer), and Boris Karloff is not convincing, of course, as an Oriental. However, he does capture the Oriental philosophy of his character, and the plotting itself (particularly the killing method) is ingenious, worthy of a fine crime novel. (**1/2)
Reviewed by planktonrules 6 / 10

The first of six Wong moves by Monogram Pictures

Throughout the 1930s, Fox Studios made a ton of very successful Charlie Chan films. It isn't surprising that this led to knock-off characters like Mr. Moto (also from Fox) and Mr. Wong (from poverty row giant, Monogram Studios). Frankly, while the Moto and Wong films are pleasant enough B-movies, they are too similar to the Chan films but lack their charm and wit. In the case of Wong and Chan the similarity was even greater as both were of Chinese descent, traveled the world and were "do-gooders" who often helped the helpless when conventional police work failed.In the early 1940s after Monogram completed six not particularly distinguished films AND Fox decided to discontinue the Chan series, an opportunity arose for Monogram to bring Sidney Toler to the studio and make their own Chan films. As a result, Wong was expendable and since four years had passed since the last film in this series, the studio heads decided they wanted no more Wongs. Besides, if they had Chan AND Wong, the resulting films would be like having two Wongs--and that's just not right.MR. WONG, DETECTIVE is the first Wong film and there's nothing particularly wong, I mean WRONG about the film. It was entertaining and had a nice mystery. However, it's also an awful lot like several other Monogram films--and is most like their next Wong film, THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG. It's also a lot like the Chan films, MURDER OVER NEW YORK, THE JADE MASK and DOCKS OF NEW ORLEANS. In other words, many plot elements were repeated and after a while the films started to be indistinguishable from each other--something that was NOT a problem with the Fox films.Overall, it's worth seeing and is possibly the best film of the series--though this isn't saying a lot.
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