"Phantom of Chinatown" Review

 

by Daniel White

Is Phantom of Chinatown (1940) the first Hollywood movie where a detective of Asian descent is actually enacted by an actor of Asian descent?

Keye Luke (who gets above the title billing) plays James Lee Wong, a Chinese American at the fictional Southern University who decides to investigate the death of his professor (Charles F. Miller) after it is revealed he has been poisoned.

Boris Karloff depicts Wong in the first five films for Monogram, portraying the intrepid gumshoe in typical Hollywood fashion. His Wong is polite, inscrutable, a dutiful Asian shamus. Luke chooses to play it differently, freeing himself from the Tinseltown stereotypes of what an "Oriental" sleuth should be. Young, determined but not brash, Keye Luke is personable with plenty of charisma. In another era he would have had a distinguished career as a handsome leading man, generating plenty of crushes among the girls eating their popcorn in the dark.

Like Karloff's Mr. Wong, Detective (1939), the movie is okay, a decent but not a terribly exciting B programmer. It's unfortunate that Monogram couldn't have given Luke better material. It would have been refreshing if they had invested in the character and turned out more Wong pictures with him starring. However this was the last in the series, and Keye Luke quickly returned to supporting roles.

Grant Withers plays the easily riled Detective Street ("Get outta of here, you mutton head!"), and his rapport with Luke is fun, more engaging than it was with Karloff in Mr. Wong, Detective.

With the pretty Lotus Long as the astute Wei Lin, and Lee Tung Foo as Wong's excitable man servant Tchin, Phantom of Chinatown is available on YouTube in a high quality print.