The Mandarin Mystery

The Mandarin Mystery is the second of two Ellery Queen films done by Columbia Pictures and it features Eddie Quillan as the amateur sleuth and son of a professional one. Instead of the shy bookish Ellery as realized best by Jim Hutton on a shortlived television series, we get a Smart Aleck punk who lives to show up the police department, especially Inspector Queen played here by Wade Boteler. No wonder fans of the series were up in arms.

The Mandarin referred to here is a Chinese stamp which was a rare misprint edition because the Mandarin portrayed on the postage stamp had his clothes on backwards. Charlotte Henry is going to sell the stamp to collector George Irving, but the stamp is stolen and the thief killed.

Unfortunately several minutes were eliminated from this film by YouTube so I had to piece it together in my mind. Not a bad story, but Quillan really kills this film.

The literary work on which this film was based--THE Chinese ORANGE MYSTERY--is a locked-room murder mystery that is light on characterization but heavy on the puzzle aspect of the murder, where no one knows who the victim is, the victim's clothes have all been turned inside out, and everything in the murder room has been turned backward. To do a faithful film adaptation of the book would probably be difficult, especially for a 55-minute b-movie which needs to be fast-moving and witty. In the Ellery Queen film made the year before, THE Spanish CAPE MYSTERY, which was an OK film, the filmmakers basically streamlined the plot, but were unable to give much depth or interest to any of the characters (other than Ellery and Inspector Queen). THE MANDARIN MYSTERY takes elements of the book THE Chinese ORANGE MYSTERY--a rare stamp, a murder in a locked room, some of the character names--and basically creates a new story around them. I had just re-read the novel before seeing this film, but they have little in common. If you can forget the book and just treat the film as an entity of its own, it's not that bad. Eddie Quillan is a charming screen presence, and he tries to restrain his comic mugging somewhat, but the script does not allow him to show much analytical prowess, and he spends far more effort romantically chasing the girl who is the main suspect than he does working on the crime. Wade Boteler plays Inspector Queen well--professional, but with a warm heart--and he and Ellery do show glimpses of the rapport they have in the books (and in the Jim Hutton/David Wayne TV series). On the whole, though, this film is an average 30s murder mystery, played with a light touch by a charming comic actor, but it has little to do with either the novel on which it was supposedly based or with the Ellery Queen series in general.

Using the Ellery Queen characters, this little yarn spins a tale of a stolen stamp of great value. A murder is committed and the victim doesn't seem to fit the situation. It has that thirties silliness where all the police are a bunch of snarly knuckleheads. They couldn't find their way out of a shoebox. Anyway the young Queen, who is irreverent and extremely amorous, condescends to enter the case because he has designs on the leading lady, a feisty thing who doesn't seem to be affected by much of anything, including a corpse. There is a little crime solving of the CSI variety built in. There's lots of comedy, including a fainting hotel manager (who actually detracts from the affairs at hand. Still the plot is entertaining and fast moving and isn't as stilted and sappy than many of its genre. Queen is a bit too much for my tastes, but, then, this was another time and another place. It shows why the Thin Man series worked so well. It was the charm of their characters and they way they played off one another. Give this one a look if you can.

Eddie Quillan was an odd choice to play the lead in this detective film because he was essentially a small smart-allecky little pip-squeak--not the brilliant or studly hero you'd expect to see in this type of film. Because of this, the film certainly IS unusual. The problem is that even with this novel portrayal, the film isn't all that interesting or well-done. At best it's a mediocre time-passer and not the equal of other series detective B-films from the period. For my time, I would much rather watch a Charlie Chan, Saint or Sherlock Holmes film--they seemed to have better production values and writing as well as a leading man that was more likable. Sorry,...I just didn't particularly care for this film.

Oh, and by the way, there is no such thing as the Chinese Mandarin stamp that is worth a fortune--this was made up for the film.

What are people complaining about! This is a pretty decent movie for what it is. It's a very entertaining movie to watch, thanks to its fine good old fashioned style of humor.

If this movie was made as a serious one it would had been a very bad movie. I mean, there is not really much to the story. There are too many characters (Atleast for an one hour movie.), which makes the story and the whole whodunit element of the movie quite confusing at times. The actual plot also just isn't that interesting and concentrates on the worlds most rare stamp, that appears to have been stolen.

The movie is really being saved by its fun. The movie foremost is like a comedy, rather than really a mystery movie. The actors are all entertaining in their roles and some of them are obviously deliberately over-the-top. It makes "The Mandarin Mystery" a real pleasant and light movie to watch. You know, the sort of movie that is great to watch in between.

Nothing too impressive, just some good old fashioned- and effective, simple entertainment.

7/10

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