Grade: D+
Synopsis: Sleuth Wong (Boris Karloff) solves blowgun murders in San Francisco.
Mr. Wong in Chinatown, the third (of six) installment in Monogram’s “Mr. Wong” series, is a modest, B-grade detective yarn buoyed by a fun performance from Boris Karloff in the titular role.
The story is pretty much by the numbers, opening with a murder that only Wong can solve using his Chinatown contacts, awkwardly introducing the token female lead in Marjorie Reynolds, and finishing with the obligatory “big reveal” that you’ll see coming a mile away. True, there’s a midget and assorted blowgun murders along the way, but really, this isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. MORE »
Posted 487 days ago in Movie Reviews and Boris Karloff. No responses
Grade: D+
Synopsis: English archeologists race the fiendish Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) and his evil daughter (Myrna Loy) to find lost crypt of Genghis Kahn and recover its mystical artifacts.
While Boris Karloff take top billing and plays the titular character, The Mask of Fu Manchu is probably most notable for Myrna Loy’s part as Karloff’s sadistic daughter. She looks great and, like Karloff, has a lot of fun with the role, even if she looks a little silly in the Chinese make-up. MORE »
Posted 500 days ago in Movie Reviews and Boris Karloff. No responses
Grade: B-
Synopsis: During World War I, a group of British cavalrymen, lost in the Mesopotamian desert, falls prey to unseen Arab snipers.
The Lost Patrol is a tight psychological drama from director John Ford.
The film is a model of efficiency, wasting no time in establishing the film’s premise and atmosphere as it opens with a British cavalry man on horseback in the desert. It’s a wide shot, showing the expanse and desolation of the surroundings. Then a muffled gunshot rings out and the man falls forward, dead. MORE »
Posted 511 days ago in Movie Reviews, Boris Karloff and John Ford. No responses
Grade: D+
Synopsis: Recently turned into a raven, a magician (Peter Lorre) talks a fellow magician (Vincent Price) into helping him exact revenge on the magician (Boris Karloff) responsible.
The Raven is an ill-conceived horror spoof from director Roger Corman and screenwriter Richard Matheson, loosely based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
The problem here is the tone. Rather than keeping things low-key and opting for a black comedy, the filmmaker’s go over the top from scene one. The result is a camp-fest that’s neither scary nor funny, and only mildly witty at best. MORE »
Posted 584 days ago in Movie Reviews, Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Roger Corman and Vincent Price. 2 responses
Grade: B
Synopsis: A violent gangster (Paul Muni) claws his way to the top of the underworld.
Scarface is a well put together gangster film highlighted by a great performance by Paul Muni as the titular character.
After a shaky start featuring a lengthy indictment on the world of organized crime, the film kicks into gear, with Muni’s Tony Camonte starting out as a low-level mafia hood. Quickly, and bloodily, he rises to head his own crew, with George Raft (in one of his first films) as his right-hand man. Boris Karloff also turns up as the head of one of the rival gangs that clash with Camonte for control of the city. MORE »
Posted 605 days ago in Movie Reviews, Boris Karloff and Howard Hawks. No responses
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