Something fishy is going on at the Pekin Chop Suey House in Vancouver's Chinatown. A diner, Yew Let Sen, finds an engraved metal disc in his food; when he tries to leave, a knife is thrown into his back and the cop who arrives says he's "dead as a kipper." A man named Brandham, who may be involved in smuggling drugs in his food exports, witnesses this and leaves. The dead man was fighting the drug traffic and police detective Doverscourt goes to a curio chop run by a Mr. Chan for help. A handsome young man named Robert Rande also visits the shop because he is fascinated by Zenobia, a young white woman who works there. She won't talk to him, seemingly cowed into silence by a ghostly vision of a hooded man. When Rande refuses to leave, a knife is thrown, missing him by inches. Rande goes to visit his friend, private detective Donegal Dawn, who has coincidentally been called in to work on the Sen murder case, along with Chan Tow Ling, owner of the curio shop and a police informer. Soon, Brandham goes to see the cops for help in extricating himself from the drug business. Ultimately, all these plotlines are pulled together by rumors of devil worship conducted at the temple of the Magic Eye of Lao-Tse (I assume this is not meant to be the real-life author of the Tao Te Ching, just a Hollywood borrowing) and led by a figure known as the Black Robe. Both Brandham and Doverscourt go missing and Dawn says that any claims of supernatural powers are simply "a great screen of mysticism to cover up some ghastly traffic in human souls." Rande soon discovers that Zenobia has been hypnotized to serve as an acolyte at the temple, and in fact, she may be capable of materializing and dematerializing at will. Brandham is turned into an opium addict zombie—we actually see him sniffing opium, perhaps a first in a mainstream movie—and he gets the Yogi of Madrada, an occultist, to do some delving to dig out information from Brandham's "subjective" mind (I think we would say unconscious mind), leading everyone to an island on the Canadian coast where Zenobia has been taken. Is there a real occult force at work, and can our heroes fight it successfully?
As regular readers of my blog might have figured out, I am drawn to B-movies with words like Chinatown or Shanghai in their titles, with the promise of exotic and mysterious goings-on. I'm usually disappointed and have to draw any pleasure from a supporting actor or an interesting setting. This movie, however, met my expectations. It's got Poverty Row production values—it was made in Canada by a Canadian company—but the acting is solid and the premise is interesting. I think the movie suggests that the villain, who is a powerful hypnotist, may also actually have supernatural powers, though I may have misread the evidence; the story is good but the script could have used another run-through. The actors who play Rande (Nick Stuart) and Brandham (James Flavin) are both boyishly handsome and look a bit alike, so it took me some time to distinguish them. Stuart in particular is very good; he made a number of B-movies and serials though I was not familiar with him. James Flavin, who has over 500 credits on IMDb, is fine, and was married to Lucile Browne (Zenobia); her character spends most of her time in a trance but comes a bit more alive at the end. Raymond Lawrence, another actor I didn’t know, is Dawn, and though Stuart is billed first, Lawrence's role is just as big. (And what a great name: Donegal Dawn. I wish there had been more movies with that character.) As was par for the course in the classic movie era, none of the Chinese characters are played by Chinese actors. Running under an hour, this moves along smartly, even if some plotpoints are unclear: Brandham's smuggling complicity, Rande's relationship to Dawn—some critics call him Dawn's partner in detection though I didn't pick up on that, how real the occult occurrences are. Still, for exotic B-film pleasures, this is a keeper. Pictured are Lawrence and Flavin. [DVD]
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