Daughter of the Tong

Here we have "Daughter of the Tong" which in 53 minutes manages to pack in a lot more than most of today's movies do in 90 minutes or more. The whole plot is so 1930's in a B movie film noir way. Today, this would barely make it as Law & Order episode unless it was more luridly done up. Basically, your standard crime caper involving the nefarious doing of the Chinese Tong in San Francisco. Evelyn Brent stars as the mysterious Carney aka The Illustrious One aka "The Daughter of the Tong". She's running a crime racket yet it's about to get some hurt from some little heard of outfit called the FBI. The plot holes are gigantic yet the cast is great and manage to make this in to a decently suspenseful and, both intentionally and unintentionally, humorous film. I really enjoyed it, so 6 stars.

Props to Evelyn Brent for playing this role as George Raft -- in fact many choices seem to deliberately ignore the out-dated 'yellow peril' tropes implied by the title.

Despite a wig and some eye makeup Brent is no dragon lady. She delivers every line in a gangster monotone with a gun in her hand -- decidedly un-feminine and tough. She never seduces or simps, and there's no 'caught between worlds' diatribe. She's too busy plotting how she'll murder her next business partner.... Even her kimono has shoulder pads!

Her ONE Asian henchman, played by Richard Loo (often cast to subvert stereotype by being very American) is commanded to perform an 'oriental manicure', and instead of an elaborate Fu Manchu torture scene we get what looks like an actual manicure, complete with nail-clipping sounds.... I'm now obsessed with the idea that all lady gangster movies should replace the ubiquitous 'rough up the detective' scene with a 'force the detective to trim his nails' scene.

While it starts as a 'yellow peril' -- most of the action takes place in the Oriental Hotel (HQ for human trafficking, obviously) with an un-convincing import/export business in the front parlor -- no one seems interested in resolving that story.... By '39 tastes had shifted to organized crime and political corruption so the production feels patched together and the script almost incoherent, climaxing as noisily as they could afford: car chases, gun shootouts, and 2-fisted brawls.

It's a B-movie from a B-studio. If you watch with low (no) expectations you might be amused by a film struggling to figure out its genre, and an unapologetic lady crime boss performance by Brent which somehow isn't sabotaged by the goofy script.

This is an old "B" crime movie if there ever was one, straight out of the 1930s. This was released in 1939 but it looks and feels more like 1931. The acting isn't bad but it's closer to Ed Wood-type '50s material than to Casablanca. In the first half of the film, the story drags too much. You'd think that would be almost impossible in a film that's less than an hour long, but it's true. For much of the first 30 minutes, nothing happens, but it picks up in the second half with hokey barroom-brawl-type fights and a car chase in the country.

The story is a simple one: an FBI agent goes undercover to get a crime boss. The twist is that "Carney," the crime boss of San Francisco's Chinatown, is a woman and the FBI doesn't know that. By the way, nobody is the gang is Asian.

The man pretending to semi-famous crook "Gallagher" from the east who has just escaped from the Atlanta prison, has his work cut out for him: another guy - "Lefty" (gee, what a unique name for a criminal) from Atlanta is there and could blow our man's cover. Playing the FBI good guy is Grant Withers ("agent Ralph Dickson"). Gallagher was only recruited because the local heat was on Carney and she preferred someone else running the show for awhile in case the law won. Then, she wouldn't implicated since she and the new guy had no connections.

I wish "Carney" had a bigger role because Evelyn Brent is very good in here, very mysterious, beautiful and her dialog is fun to hear. Unlike "Muggsy," one of her gang members who is too nice a guy to be a thug, Brent's character is tough and edgy.

The transfer quality on this Alpha Video disc is horrible, like a bad VHS tape.

This is a classic non classic. It has a simple plot of Hollywood's "B" movies of the time and is predictable in its outcome from the go. Never the less it is fun to watch, with the old cars and bad stunts and its standard (this type of movie) plot. The acting is almost laughable in some places, but this is what makes this movie so much fun to watch. It truly reminds me of the hundreds of movies i went to as a kid, prior to the arrival of television.

This film is rather well known for a B picture, I have heard of it since a long time and I understand why. Showing a villain female lead character is of course amazing, especially in those periods. Even now in 2024, it would be daring, so imagine in 1939. Evelyn Brent is perfect in this role, and the film is entertaining, more than so many others from this period. But I expected something more powerful, unusual, poignant. Evelyn Brent robs the whole film, it was foreseeable after seeing her for only a few minutes. The last minutes could have saved the story, at least for me. But this ending is just lousy; such a shame.