Shadow of Chinatown

First off the main character in this movie is Chinatown of course,, what a magnificent area to visit if you ever get the chance like I did in 1994. 2nd Bela Lugosi's performance was immpecible, I love all of his little disguises. he specializes in hypnotizing people into deep trances and he is usually the only one who can bring them out of it,, he is hired by a local pretty Asian girl who wants to bring down the Chinese merchants in san Francisco,, he has a very strong distant for Eurasian,, and Chinese, and will stop and nothing to destroy all of them.. there is a young lady reporter, who is so annoying,, and get's into all sorts of trouble in this movie,, and constantly has to be saved the whole movie long from her being nosy,, and not following orders. excellent movie,, for the most part.

As I often say, I enjoy watching the master, Lugosi, in just about anything. The problem with this is he doesn't have much to do. In order to create a serial, it's necessary for the bad guy to continue to goof up, leaving his adversaries alive to continue the pursuit. The episodes are an endless trapezing of zombie like lackeys and air headed reporters. There's enough sexism to go around for a long time. The conclusion will make some gag. Chinatown businesses are the target of Lugosi who is "Eurasian" and very angry about something, I guess being Eurasian. He tries to destroy the town just for spite. It's an endless parade of pratfalls and silly hypnotism. The one young Asian woman is very beautiful. She is the honorable one in the film, but has been used by Lugosi and he has a hypnotic control over her. It all comes out in the wash, as if we cared.

Wiki says the feature ran 71 minutes. The verson I saw was labelled Chapter One, which, according to IMDB runs 26 minutes. BUT the version I saw ran 44 minutes.

But then I see that it's really just the first two chapters. What's the point?

It also resembles an Ed Wood picture. The acting is horrible and half teh Chinese are White people.

Just a waste of celluloid.

Eurasian Victor Poten decides to drive the Chinese merchants from their district in order to start his new race and eliminating any Asians or whites that stand in his way. Its up to Martin Andrews, author and expert on Chinese cultures (only thanks to his manservant Willy Fu) and reporter Joan Whiting to stop Poten's nefarious plot. This serial is absolutely forgettable with absolutely nothing to keep the viewer in any suspense to watch the next week's chapter or the serial throughout. The entire cast tries their best to make something out of this, but are overcome by the ineptness of the production crew. The only saving grace for this travesty is the banter between Herman Brix and Joan Barclay does make for some funny scenes. Rating, based on serials, 2.

About the movie itself, there's a few things that are cool. Hypnotism, remote hypnotism using machines, gangsters, attempts at fight scenes, high up stuff, and car chases. All of this though seemed to be overshadowed by the manic versus stilted interaction between actors since there's very little to be said about writing or plot.

Clearly a few folks knew what they were doing on the screen. Bela Lugosi and Luana Walters had me rooting for them even though they were "the bad guys" (at least in the beginning). Sharply contrasting were Joan Barclay's "going for the oscar!" antics and Bruce Bennett's mannequin-style method.

Attempts at humour were hackneyed, cliché, stereotypical, and offensive (even in that day I'm sure towards both races and audience intellect). Martin Andrews comes across as a jerk from beginning to end. I don't usually pay much attention to actors in film, but with such a slight offering, it seemed that's all that there was to observe.