La figlia di Shanghai

...screams a headline at the beginning of the film. Quick! Somebody notify agents Scully and Mulder. No, not THOSE kinds of aliens!

A human-trafficking ring makes an offer a Chinese American San Francisco/Chinatown businessman cannot refuse, except that he does. For that, and for taking the evidence that he already has against the human trafficking ring to the feds, said trafficking ring kills him. His daughter (Anna May Wong), rather bitter about her father's murder not ardently being investigated by the feds he was trying to help, decides to go under cover in the tropics, using the only contact name she has - Hartmann - and ferret out the killers and traffickers herself. She runs into G-man Kim Lee (Philip Ahn) while doing this, and they team up to bring the criminals to justice. Along the way they encounter a very unlikely Mr. Big and an even more unlikely hero who steps in to help them save the day.

This may be one of my favorite B movies of the decade. Wong and Ahn are certainly unusual leads in an American film of the day, and they're both great in their roles. There's a surprising amount of violence, including people being dropped to their death out of a plane, shootings, and brutal beatings. J. Carroll Naish and Anthony Quinn are typecast as two of the bad guys, but I was surprised to see Buster Crabbe, with black hair and a mustache, as a particularly sadistic cohort.

Rather unintentionally funny moment - In the opening scene the two guys piloting a plane full of aliens headed for the United States have been spotted by a government plane, which is after them. The two tough guys are inexplicably wearing matching checkered ascots. Recommended - the movie, not the ascots.

Anna May Wong and Charles Bickford make this human-trafficking film work very well. There is a shocking scene at the very beginning of the film where a load of illegals are just dumped into the ocean to avoid legal problems with the air patrol. Anthony Quinn, in an early role, does the dumping. Philip Ahn, the Master in the Kung Fu series with David Carradine, plays an undercover cop, and Wong has her own agenda to take down the notorious human traffickers. An entertaining film from beginning to end.

Anna May Wong's father is killed because he will not cooperate with a gang that smuggles illegal Chinese emigrants into the US. Miss Wong goes undercover to help Federal agent Philip Ahn track down the mysterious head of the ring.

Paramount gave Miss Wong a push upward with top billing on this B movie directed by Robert Florey. She's certainly given a splashy entrance in a spectacular Chinese costume, but despite popping in and out as she goes dance hall girl somewhere in the islands back to the US, the story is diffuse. Intercut with her, we see Ahn's slow track dealing with slow-witted goons, and a large cast of performers adding attraction to the story: Charles Bickford, Buster Crabbe, Cecil Cunningham, J. Carrol Naish, Anthony Quinn, Evelyn Brent... even though there are a lot of Chinese-American performers here, they're almost all uncredited.

It's the same sort of story that Poverty Row producers had been telling for a couple of years, with the sort of gloss that Paramount could provide mostly coming from Charles Schoenbaum's photography. Clearly they were aiming at a sort of Von Sternberg look that lends this a pre-noir air, but the script is too straightforward for much more than an entertaining flick.

These are indeed heady times for fans of the actress Anna May Wong. Not only are there two (2!) biographies of the woman in recent release, but a documentary of Anna May's life is purportedly in the works, a restored print of Wong's late silent classic "Piccadilly" has just been released, AND, for those lucky of us to live in NYC, an Anna May Wong retrospective has just unreeled in this town's Museum of Modern Art. Although hugely popular in the 1920s and '30s, up until recently Hollywood's first Asian actress of any kind of renown has languished in relative obscurity, known only to fans of old-timey movies...perhaps. When I told some coworkers that I was going to see some Anna May, I half expected them to make some remark about Japanese comics (anime). I have been a fan of Ms. Wong's for many years now, although that fandom has been largely based on just a handful of films, most especially the 1932 von Sternberg classic "Shanghai Express." Her part in this picture is not large, but she makes such a mysterious and exotic impression that that brief performance was enough to make a convert of me. With the exception of the 1949 film noir "Impact" and one or two others, though, it has been extremely hard for fans of this once-famous actress to see her other work. It was therefore with great anticipation that I attended the MoMA's double bill of two of Anna May's rare '30s work: "Dangerous to Know" and "Daughter of Shanghai." The first is a compact little B picture, in which Anna May is the kept mistress of crime boss Akim Tamiroff. It was a lot of fun, and very interesting, but the latter is the one that I really enjoyed. Anna May is without question the star of "DOS," and the picture, although admittedly in the B category, is as fun as can be. In this one, Ms. Wong plays the daughter of a Chinese shop owner in San Francisco. When her dad is killed by alien smugglers who are pressuring him into taking on a load of their human cargo, Anna May goes undercover to track down the bad guys. Her quest takes her to Central America, where she winds up taking a job as a dancer in one of the seediest dives you've ever seen on film. The owner of this joint is Charles Bickford, who is believed to be one of the heads of the smuggling operation. "DOS" features some surprisingly gritty action scenes, and some real cliffhanger moments. Ms. Wong is aided in her quest to smash the alien smugglers by a G-man played by Philip Ahn. I'd never seen Mr. Ahn play a "good guy" before; he was so often cast as a sneaky weasel type. Anyway, he's very effective in the role of Anna May's partner. J. Carrol Naish and Anthony Quinn (in a very early role) are both hissably fun as two of the nasty smugglers. It is really quite remarkable how much story and action are packed into this film's short, 63-minute running time. And for fans of Anna May Wong, the picture is heavenly. What a delight it is to see this charming actress take the lead role in a smashing action picture, and go undercover in that Central American sleazepit. The audience at the MoMA burst into spontaneous applause at the conclusion of this nifty B picture, and that applause was certainly merited. This is one fun hour at the movies!

First and foremost, it was very refreshing to see the treatment of Asian-Americans in this film. There are no stereotypes or actors in yellow face, and the characters are articulate, sophisticated, and intelligent. The two main characters unraveling a smuggling/extortion racket (the fabulous Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn) are of Asian descent but the parts could have been written as Caucasians. Meanwhile it's a group of white people who run this racket and brutally murder people. It's no wonder that Wong was so happy with this film, her first with Paramount, and said "I like my part in this picture better than any I've ever had before...This picture gives Chinese a break - we have sympathetic parts for a change."

Overall it's a B movie in terms of production value and the plot is simple, but it's certainly entertaining, there are moments of tension, and of course it also has Anna May Wong. She looks radiant while wearing a number of gowns, most of which she had purchased herself in China on her travels there the year before, which was a big event in her life. A great example of her acting ability is her facial reaction when she sees what's happened to her father in the film, and we also get to see her silky dance moves when her character goes undercover as a dancer in a tropical nightclub. I adore her and everything she fought for, and this film feels like a vindication of sorts, after the bitter pill of being passed over for 'The Good Earth.'

You can really feel the heat and seaminess of the environment her character finds herself in, and I thought director Robert Florey did a good job given the scale of the picture. Some of his camera angles and shots of things like people being dumped into the bay are quite good. The representation of women is strong too - aside from Wong, the kingpin of the crime organization is a tough woman played by Cecil Cunningham. You can also look for 22 year old Anthony Quinn as well. Quite enjoyable for me, and I wished it had gone on for longer than 62 minutes.

Quote: White nightclub patron, dismissive upon seeing Anna May Wong: "I don't speak Chinese." Anna May Wong: "I speak English."