Phantom of Chinatown

6/23/2022

This is quite a fun little murder mystery with Keye Luke on good form as "Jimmy Wong" who is brought in by police captain "Street" (Grant Withers) to investigate the murder of a renowned archaeologist who had only just returned from an expedition to Mongolia. Who did what to whom all revolves around the search for a mysterious scroll that he had recovered from a tomb. which may reveal the location of some large oil deposits. It's actually quite well written with plenty of twists and turns and it's not so very easy to guess the culprit until near the end of this short feature. Luke isn't as good as Karloff was in the earlier "Wong" films, but I found him easily as good and entertaining a detective in this as Sydney Toler was in many of the "Charlie Chan" films, in which Luke also appeared.