Daughter of the Tong

Props to Evelyn Brent for playing this role as George Raft -- in fact many choices seem to deliberately ignore the out-dated 'yellow peril' tropes implied by the title.

Despite a wig and some eye makeup Brent is no dragon lady. She delivers every line in a gangster monotone with a gun in her hand -- decidedly un-feminine and tough. She never seduces or simps, and there's no 'caught between worlds' diatribe. She's too busy plotting how she'll murder her next business partner.... Even her kimono has shoulder pads!

Her ONE Asian henchman, played by Richard Loo (often cast to subvert stereotype by being very American) is commanded to perform an 'oriental manicure', and instead of an elaborate Fu Manchu torture scene we get what looks like an actual manicure, complete with nail-clipping sounds.... I'm now obsessed with the idea that all lady gangster movies should replace the ubiquitous 'rough up the detective' scene with a 'force the detective to trim his nails' scene.

While it starts as a 'yellow peril' -- most of the action takes place in the Oriental Hotel (HQ for human trafficking, obviously) with an un-convincing import/export business in the front parlor -- no one seems interested in resolving that story.... By '39 tastes had shifted to organized crime and political corruption so the production feels patched together and the script almost incoherent, climaxing as noisily as they could afford: car chases, gun shootouts, and 2-fisted brawls.

It's a B-movie from a B-studio. If you watch with low (no) expectations you might be amused by a film struggling to figure out its genre, and an unapologetic lady crime boss performance by Brent which somehow isn't sabotaged by the goofy script.

This is a classic non classic. It has a simple plot of Hollywood's "B" movies of the time and is predictable in its outcome from the go. Never the less it is fun to watch, with the old cars and bad stunts and its standard (this type of movie) plot. The acting is almost laughable in some places, but this is what makes this movie so much fun to watch. It truly reminds me of the hundreds of movies i went to as a kid, prior to the arrival of television.

Here we have "Daughter of the Tong" which in 53 minutes manages to pack in a lot more than most of today's movies do in 90 minutes or more. The whole plot is so 1930's in a B movie film noir way. Today, this would barely make it as Law & Order episode unless it was more luridly done up. Basically, your standard crime caper involving the nefarious doing of the Chinese Tong in San Francisco. Evelyn Brent stars as the mysterious Carney aka The Illustrious One aka "The Daughter of the Tong". She's running a crime racket yet it's about to get some hurt from some little heard of outfit called the FBI. The plot holes are gigantic yet the cast is great and manage to make this in to a decently suspenseful and, both intentionally and unintentionally, humorous film. I really enjoyed it, so 6 stars.

Thanks to the movie's extended prologue I now know who the FBI is. Like most Americans, I was in serious doubt. Kidding aside, the prologue is rather odd in its assumptions, even for 1939. All in all, there's nothing special about this 60-minute programmer that mainly dramatizes the agency at work in stopping an Asian smuggling ring. It appears the culprits smuggle people into the country inside sealed boxes who apparently breathe by magic. Anyway, despite the title, the flick's not very ethnic, Loo being the only real Asian, and with no real presence of a tong.

Story-wise, Withers goes undercover to penetrate the gang and its mysterious mastermind, Carney. But to us viewers, the culprit's pretty apparent from the outset. Don't worry, though, if things slow down there's always a brawl available- I hope the guys got double pay for all the acrobatics. And catch the great Richard Loo already planning his many sinister roles in WWII, along with Dave O'Brien taking a break from six-shooters and cowboy hats. On the other hand, it's too bad Brent didn't make a stronger try at acting evil since she really looks the part. The best part to me was the well-crafted car chase over mountain roads that's worthy of a more expensive production. Anyway, the flick's an okay action feature for a slow evening, but nothing more.

By the way, this DVD was released by Alpha Video---a company which sometimes releases some wonderfully obscure titles (mostly public domain) but which NEVER cleans up the prints or adds closed captions. In other words, the DVD production values are strictly 3rd-rate...at best. In this case, the sides of the picture are all clipped off--like someone videotaped it right off TV and missed the edges. It's also super-fuzzy and washed out--making it a chore to watch.

This film has a very strange title in many ways. A 'Tong' is a Chinese mob that was strongly associated with assassinations and violence at the early part of the 20th century. However, there are almost no Asians in the film and the supposed leader of the Tong is a joke. Evelyn Brent sports a black wig and is supposed to be a Chinese mob boss--even though she seems about as Chinese as Eva Gabor--and Miss Gabor's accent sounded a bit closer to Chinese!! The plot involves the FBI infiltration of the Tong as well as the story of a man who is trying to escape from the mob's clutches. None of it is particularly interesting and the film seems much, much longer than its 53 minute running time, as it's dreadfully dull entertainment.

By the way, I referred to this as a 'Poverty Row' film. This is a nickname given to the tiniest studios during the 1930s and 40s and they usually didn't even have their own studios--renting space in a major studio at night. This means that this Metropolitan Picture was probably, for most indoor scenes, filmed at nigh. Production values and quality at most of these low-rent studios was generally very low, though on occasion they made dandy films...and this is certainly not one of them!!