Captured in Chinatown

Two young Chinese lovers bring peace to their warring families so they can marry. When this hits the newspapers, the big point is that the gifts include a jade necklace worth $50,000. This excites crooks, who decide to steal it. Fortunately, reporters Charles Delaney and Marion Shilling are assigned to cover the nuptials, and Bob's invaluable and much brighter assistant, Tarzan are on hand. Can they foil this dastardly plot and prevent another tong war?

It's a really cheap Weiss Brothers drama, but given the standards of the era, it's quite watchable. The Chinese performers have roles which make them human, there are some nice gimmicks, and Tarzan is a fine performer.

We're not talking Johnny Weissmuller, nor Ken Maynard's horse. This Tarzan is a handsome German Shepherd with a nice bag of tricks, from stealing parking tickets to locking up the bad guys. It's the third movie he appeared in, all cheap Poverty Row efforts.

Elmer Clifton directs the movie at a good clip. He was one of the directors who studied under D. W. Griffith. Like half the directing talent of the period, he was an assistant director on BIRTH OF A NATION, as well as acting in it. His directing career seems to have peaked in the mid-1920s. After that he wound up on Poverty Row, where he mostly directed westerns. He died in 1949, at the age of 59.

When I saw that this film starred Tarzan, I was confused--after all, the film is about Chinatown! However, I checked and realized that Tarzan is a dog--a dog that starred in three different films--and "Captured in Chinatown" was his last.

The film begins in Chinatown. A romance has blossomed that looks like another Romeo & Juliet, as the two lovers come from rival families--ones that have hated each other for years. However, eventually they are able to get the families to bury the hatchet (literally and figuratively). To seal the truce, one family is going to give the other a rare jade necklace. However, some scum-bags (including a guy named Zamboni) are out to steal it.

Into this mess come two reporters, Bob and Ann. But the real hero among them is Bob's dog, Tarzan. Again and again, Tarzan seems smarter and more capable than anyone--sort of like a German Shepherd version of Lassie--but even smarter. For instance, when Bob commits a HUGE cliché by beating up a bad guy and NOT picking up the gun, only minutes later, Tarzan is smart enough to do this! All in all, it's pretty much what you'd expect from a wonder-dog film from a tiny studio. Reasonably entertaining but silly as well (think about it--the day is save by a DOG!!). The one interesting positive is that Chinese people really played the Chinese characters--something very unusual for the time (when often white folks pretended to be Asian)

Short crime/newspaper story centered in Chinatown. The story concerns two warring Chinese families, the Lings and the Wongs. The daughter of one loves the son of the other. When a marriage is agreed upon a valuable jade necklace is to be passed to the couple as a means of sealing the new friendship. However when news of the wedding and the necklace is published villains plot to steal the necklace.

After an intriguing first ten minutes or so set in Chinatown among the two families, where a large portion of the dialog is spoken in Chinese the focus shifts two two reporters who end up in Chinatown covering the wedding (aided by a dog named Tarzan). From that point on the Chinese are pushed to the background as the Caucasians take center stage as heroes and villains. You'll forgive the lack of details but this film is so short and so breezy that I'd like to leave some mystery for anyone who sees this. Its not a "who done it" more a "when will they catch on". There is murder and intrigue and of course a happy ending for everyone.

This is a decent little movie thats worth watching. If it has any real flaws its that the movie seems to be made up of little sections that you can knock out and put together in variety of different ways. There's the Chinatown stuff, the newspaper stuff, the bad guy stuff, the dog stuff, and a few other plot threads which click together like a puzzle but don't really flow together like a natural story. Its not bad, but its not as good a it should have been.

6 out of 10.

This very unusual and indeed captivating little B movie is a mixture of quite a variety of different issues: first, there's a kind of 'Romeo and Juliet' romance in Chinatown, where two young members of two rivaling old Chinese clans are desperately in love with each other, and are finally able to convince their fathers to agree to their marriage and bury the feud that has cost so many lives. But then, there are 'ordinary' white American crooks who are after the wedding gift, a precious old necklace, that the bridegroom's father wants to present to his former enemy's daughter - and they won't stop at anything in their greed, not even at reviving the family feud and make a 'blood wedding' out of the beautiful, peace-bringing romance... And then there is one of the typical reporter 'couples' with their usual 'love-hate' relationship that gets involved in the dangerous ongoings; and 'Tarzan', the police dog, as he's billed, but he's really a newsroom hound - a news hound in the REAL sense of the word! (And one of the best trained and most intelligent movie star dogs I've ever seen!)

There's a really CHILLING suspense that lasts from the first to the last moment of the film, mixed in quite a capable way with a 'doomed' love - and also some very nice, typical reporters' humor to lighten up the dark atmosphere. And the interesting point is that the senseless old Asian feud (and mark that: 'vendettas' like this one existed, and still exist, ALL over the world, among whites just like Asians or any other race!) is opposed to the reckless violence of the white gangsters who don't kill for 'honor', but just for sheer greed! And the characters are shaped out in a way that makes us feel EQUAL concern and agony about the Asian lovers and about the white reporter couple...

A very much underestimated, and perhaps also misinterpreted movie - I'd say that everyone should have a look (or a second look) first before judging it!