Mr Wong, Detective (1938)

I had never seen one of these Mr. Wong movies.  If I recall correctly, they were a staple of late night TV in my area growing up, but I didn't know what they were.  I was also pretty sure that there were no monsters in them, and if so I had other things to do.  Five of the six films starred Boris Karloff as Wong, and the sixth and final one featured Keye Luke, the first Asian to portray an Asian in the movies.  How about that?

This first movie is pretty standard detective fare, nothing you haven't seen in several movies like this.  It stands out because of Boris' portrayal of Wong, and that no one even mentions any stupid Chinese stereotypes. 

It's cool to see Karloff as a hero, since that rarely happened in his career.  He is calm and polite, and very astute.  The movie runs 68 minutes, so it gets down to business in a hurry.  It's also fun to see Neil Hamilton in here as well, long before he was a police commissioner.   The rest of the cast is quite good as well.  I'm looking forward to seeing a few more of these movies.