Daughter of the Tong (1939)
Grade: D+
Evelyn Brent a.k.a. Grandma Edelstein strikes again! This time she's Carney, the "Chinese" leader of a criminal syndicate that attracts the scrutiny of the FBI (who think she's a man for some reason). An undercover agent (Grant Withers) attempts to infiltrate the organization, but quickly gets sidetracked when he crosses paths with a spunky female non-reporter (Dorothy Short) who, as it turns out, has her own business with the syndicate.
Daughter of the Tong has the basic outlines of a serviceable 1930s crime/gangster flick, and at 53 minutes long, it also has the virtue of brevity. But nothing really comes together as it should, and despite the movie's short length it manages to drag -- especially the tedious car chase near the end, which lasts about twice as long as it should.
In fact there's quite a bit of padding in Daughter of the Tong, e.g. stock footage of newspapers being printed, a meaningless vignette featuring a pinball game, or the slow text crawl after the opening credits that sings the praises of the FBI.
(From the way the film treats the FBI -- one dull-witted gangster character has never heard of them -- you'd think they were a brand-new organization. As it turns out, the dopey gangster's ignorance isn't wholly inconceivable: Bureau was originally founded in 1909, but only got its current name in 1935. The more you know!)
Speaking of credits, Daughter of the Tong uses a technique we haven't seen too often: action shots of the lead actors on which their real names and character names are superimposed. No idea what the first movie to do this was, probably something in the silent era, but it's still a curveball.
Alas, those same credits point up the film's fundamental implausibility: Grandma Edelstein as a Chinese crime boss is about as plausible as Jackie Chan as a Jewish grandmother. (We'd pay to see that, actually.)
Winsome though Ms. Brent's quasi-Semitic* good looks may be, they work against her in this role. Sure, there's a weak attempt at Orientalizing her appearance, but the net result resembles a jaded clubber half-heartedly dressing up as Liz Taylor's Cleopatra for Halloween.
One character even refers to Carney as "slant-eyed", which manages to be both offensive and pathetic, as if the filmmakers were daring us to point out the flimsiness of their conceit. It's probably for the best that she doesn't venture a mush-mouthed "Ah so!" accent.
Come to think of it, neither do the actual Asians in the film. (Though mostly, they don't talk at all.)
Anyway, this isn't remotely a horror movie, so what's it even doing on here? Mill Creek, you simply have no shame. But if we didn't realize that by now, we'd be foolish indeed: Robot Pilot, anyone?
*(Ms. Brent married two Jewish men, looks like Lisa E's grandmother, and apparently more than a few people in Hollywood thought she was Jewish -- but according to her published biography, she wasn't. Again, the more you know!)
The White Gorilla (1945)
Grade: F
This truly dreadful jungle flick gets about half of its running time by recycling footage from the 1927 silent serial Perils of the Jungle. Somehow this material is shoehorned into a wraparound story starring Ray "Crash" Corrigan as Steve Collins, a man pursued by a giant white gorilla (which he somehow also plays).
After being badly injured by the gorilla, Steve takes refuge at a trading post, and recounts the things he's seen along the way -- which, not coincidentally, are the events of Perils of the Jungle: narrow escapes from marauding lions, an encounter with a African tribe ruled by a white woman who earned their reverence by feigning insanity, and so on.
This conceit isn't in and of itself a bad idea, since the borrowed material is visually interesting and energetic. In the earlier stretches of the movie, the editing almost makes it plausible. (It helps that the difference in film stock is surprisingly small.)
But the whole thing comes crashing down once it hits you that Corrigan never actually interacts with any of the serial characters, or does anything to help save them from their (ahem) perils, but simply reports their actions as seen from his hiding place in the bushes...
...or in a tree...
...or in the underbrush.
The result is absurdly stilted -- hackneyed and predictable, like an old vaudeville routine ("Slowly I turned..."). And as K. notes, "It makes him come off as kind of a pussy too."
Even with all this, the movie saves its lowest point for the end, with a closing soliloquy on man's hubris in trying to claim the jungle for himself. It veritably drips with pompous insincerity.
So avoid this crap, unless you're desperate to watch two men in gorilla suits do battle. (And if you are, well, there must be some footage out there of a coked-up Robin Williams arguing with his bathroom mirror.)
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