Import/export businessman Albert Raybold is working to help arm the Communists in China by sending them airplanes. He wears a jade ring that gives him cachet in Chinatown among important underworld figures, but the ring doesn't stop him from being murdered (with a fork in his chest) in a private booth at the Peking Café where he had just been given $70,000 dollars in cash for the airplanes. John Yee, owner of the café, finds him and steals the ring before the police arrive. Ted (Lyle Talbot) is an ex-cop who now drives a tourist bus around Chinatown, and he and a busload of folks are dining at the café when the murder occurs. He agrees to help Janet (Valerie Hobson), a woman who knew Raybold and was at the café; a day earlier, she had gotten a telegram saying Raybold had been murdered and was hoping to find some incriminating letters she had sent him. Ted includes her in his busload so she can leave the premises without police interference, but then Ted agrees to help his former cop buddies crack the case. When the cops stop the shipment of planes to China, it turns out that the planes were phony. Missing letters, missing money, and now fake weapons make this case rather sticky, but trust our cocky hero Ted to unravel all the knots and find the killer. I don't have much to say about this second-feature mystery. It's not exceptional in any way, but it satisfied my Saturday afternoon B-movie itch. Its exotic settings are used fairly well, though there are only a handful of Chinese characters and no Asian actors in the credited cast. I always like Talbot's breezy way as a B-lead and he's fine here. The British Hobson, best known as Dr. Frankenstein’s wife in Bride of Frankenstein, is OK, but Andy Devine, as Raybold's semi-comic relief secretary, got on my nerves. The cops bumble along, and Talbot outdoes them at each turn. Apparently in the 1960s this was part of Universal’s horror film package for TV but there is nothing even vaguely horrific about it; it's a light crime thriller all the way. Pictured are Talbot and Hobson. [YouTube]
1 comment:
Never heard of this, but if I find myself with nothing better to do, I might seek it out. Valerie Hobson is probably better known in Britain as the uptight but beautiful aristocratic wife in Kind Hearts And Coronets, and as the wife of John Profumo, played by Ian Mckellen in 'Scandal'.
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