At first glance, Boris Karloff may seem an odd choice for the screen role of James Lee Wong, a fictional detective who was popular in Collier's Magazine in the early part of the 20th century. An Englishman playing a Chinaman, without much attempt at an accent? However, film fans may remember that earlier in the 1930s, Karloff starred as the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu in THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, so he already had some experience of playing a Chinese character in Hollywood. It comes as little surprise that Karloff's presence is the best thing about this low-budget detective yarn, which employs a routine 'whodunit' style plot, far too many villains and an unsurprising outcome.None of the other cast members can really hold a light to Karloff, who makes the role of Mr. Wong his own. The mild-mannered, umbrella-carrying private detective wanders around the sets, making jokes about drinking cups of tea and eating oriental duck; other than that, there's no real reason for him to be Chinese. Still, his deductive methods are sound, if understated, and he's as observant and keen as many a Holmes imitator.Workaholic director William Nigh – who made over a hundred films in thirty years – keeps things plain and simple and there's no fancy camera-work or surprises here; but then you've never expect that from the poverty-row Monogram Pictures studio. Shouty policeman Grant Withers goes for broke with his bluff, angry detective character and he's a real hoot, livening up the film no end with his hilarious stupidity. A shame the cast list of suspects and villains are so underwhelming, these guys are about as menacing as a tea bag. The most interesting plot element lies in the murder weapon, a tiny glass ball filled with poison gas, which explodes when subjected to a certain noise; I'll not say which noise that is, as not to spoil the ending, but it comes as a fun surprise. A shame that elements like this can't stir below-average dialogue and a plot that outstays its welcome, despite only a seventy-minute running time.

Boris Karloff is "Mr. Wong, Detective" in this 1938 film.A man (John Hamilton) comes to see Mr. Wong because he has the impression that he's being followed and that his life is in danger. He and his two partners have just signed papers leaving each other their share of the business in the event of their deaths.Mr. Wong agrees to meet the gentleman in his office the next day. He can be seen looking out the window at one point, but when his office is entered, he's dead. And the only clue is a thin piece of glass. Another death follows.This is a retreaded script but still entertaining. Karloff is good as the detective, though one doesn't think of him as Oriental. Grant Withers is over the top as the police inspector, but the other actors are okay.Entertaining B movie.

This is the first of the series of Mr. Wong films based upon the series of stories entitled 'James Lee Wong' written by Hugh Wiley (1884-1968), which appeared in Colliers Magazine. Colliers was a very prominent illustrated national magazine in America which paid good money for popular fiction. It did not pay as much as the Saturday Evening Post, which contained higher quality fiction and provided F. Scott Fitzgerald with most of his income, but it was lucrative. It was not uncommon for Colliers pulp fiction to be sold on to Hollywood to provide the stories for B films. Six of these Mr. Wong stories were filmed between 1938 and 1940. The first five of these starred Boris Karloff as the Chinese detective Mr. James Lee Wong, who lives in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the sixth and final one (PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN, 1940) starred the much younger Keye Luke as Mr. Wong. However, before this series began, Bela Lugosi had starred in a film entitled THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934) which was directed by William Nigh, the same man who later directed the entire Karloff series. (He did not direct the final film in the series starring Keye Luke in 1940.) But the Lugosi film had no connection whatever with the Karloff series, since the Mr. Wong in that story is not a detective but an evil schemer who wishes to achieve world domination by collecting 'the twelve coins of Confucius'. (That was based on a short story by someone else about Confucius giving twelve coins to twelve disciples just before his death and predicting that when they all came back into one ownership again in the future, the possessor of all 12 coins would be a powerful ruler.) Earlier still, Edward G. Robinson had played another Mr. Wong in THE HONOURABLE MR. WONG (1932), based upon a play written by David Belasco and Achmed Abdullah, which was the pen name of Alexander Romanoff, son of the Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff of Russia. The Chinese surname Wong is spelled Wang in Mandarin but Wong in Cantonese. It means 'King'. It is one of the commonest surnames in China, hence it is not surprising that various Wongs have appeared in Hollywood films, as there are tens of millions of people called Mr. Wong or Mr. Wang in China itself. This first Karloff film has an ingenious plot. People are murdered by poison glass contained in thin glass spheres, but no one can figure out how the spheres are broken. The first murder takes place between the time of the arrival of the police outside a chemical factory and the entrance of the police into the murdered man's office, a very brief space of time. How did he die in that short period? Mr. Wong finally figures it out, but I shall not reveal the ingenious secret. Karloff plays Wong in a very genteel way as a kind of English gentleman who just happens to be Chinese. In fact, in the story it is mentioned that he has even studied at Oxford. Karloff utters assorted Confucian-style proverbs from time to time, such as: 'A request from a friend is virtually a command.' It is all very mannered and stylized. The film is ruined by the oafish performance of one of the worst actors in the history of the cinema, Grant Withers, as Sam the police detective. He is so ludicrous and offensive, and shouts so much and is so rude to everyone including his fiancée, that the film's impact is gutted by it and made to appear wholly ridiculous. That is a pity, because the film otherwise had an eerie B picture air of mystery about it which Karloff's quiet detective greatly enhanced. What the Chinese would think of these films today can easily be imagined, since Karloff, especially in profile, is very much what the Chinese call 'a big nose', and could only elicit a laugh (especially as there are no Confucian gentlemen left today anyway). Certainly there was a great improvement in Hollywood when the highly engaging young Keye Luke was allowed to play Chinese characters, as he was genuinely Chinese, however Americanized he may have been in his manners and speech. But Hollywood always fell back on Hollywood stars to play Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Turks, American Indians, Greek peasants (Anthony Quinn as Zorba), and all manner of Europeans, without even a blush. The tradition of Westerners pretending to be Orientals continued with a British actor portraying Mahatma Gandhi in GANDHI (1982). But one must presumably not look for authenticity in a world of mass illusion.

Mr. Wong, Detective, is a standard fare B-movie that is delightful owing to the work of Boris Karloff. One does have to stretch one's sense of disbelief to see Karloff as an oriental but what dominates is Karloff's urbane humanity. It has been widely commented that in private life Karloff was gentle and engaging. It's my guess that Karloff here is mostly acting as himself, slightly stooped, charming, and witty. As such it is a testament to his ability as an actor that he could appear in so many villainous roles. As Mr. Wong one see Karloff as one's cultured uncle, full of good cheer, common sense, and abundant with decency. I only wish that it had been Karloff's better fortune to have acted in more diverse roles giving his range and appeal a wider audience. As he was much beloved in the Hollywood community perhaps Karloff didn't do so badly after all.As for the movie itself one requires a rather open sense of credulity. A series of partners in a chemical company are being murdered with poison gas and the police are at wit's end trying to determine the how, why, and who of the matter. Mr. Wong is called in early in the game and begins to pick out the pieces, literally, to the solution of the mystery. Grant Withers is the detective captain, Street, on the case and he lends the movie it's deepest dead spots. He is a loud, blustery, nincompoop of a detective, and in way over his head. If he is meant to lend comic relief, or to provide a dopey foil to the brilliance of Mr. Wong, I would have preferred a characterization not quite so annoying. There are other nefarious characters skulking about, providing red-herring dead ends, and a few twists a turns of the plot. In the end Mr. Wong identifies the killer and Street hauls him annoyingly away.Mr. Wong, Detective is a nice addition for film buffs and a fine example of the film work of Boris Karloff.