THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934)
Article #839 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2003
Posting Date: 11-28-2003
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Arline Judge

An oriental criminal tries to recover the twelve coins of Confucius so that he will become a powerful ruler.

Title check: There is nothing Wong with this title (okay, you can slap me for that).

What we have here is your typical low-budget yellow peril potboiler with an evil archcriminal and a wise-cracking reporter (look at the cast and figure out who plays who). It starts out well with a creative montage of death scenes, but it bogs down all too quickly afterwards once the plot shifts to the reporter who spends more time romancing the girl than hunting the criminal. Both Lugosi and Ford can be fun in their respective parts, but you have to be in the mood for this sort of thing, and I really wasn’t; maybe I just watched it at the Wong time (okay, you can slap me again). The dark side of coin collecting.