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.

Nice little mystery, with a good deal of comedy mixed in. Eddie Quillan is not my favorite Ellery Queen, but he has an interesting twist to the character. I though Wade Boteler did a great job as Inspector Queen and Franklin Pangborn did a great job as comic relief as Mellish, the hotel manager.

Overall, a nice film, I was quite pleased with it.

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.

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.

Josephine Temple arrives in New York with a rare stamp, the Chinese Mandarin, which she has arranged to sell to stamp collector, Dr. Alexander Kirk, for $50,000, which upsets his two nieces (Martha and Irene, as well as her fiancé Donald Trent) who don't like him spending their inheritance as an investment. Soon after she arrives, Josephine finds that the stamp has been stolen, and races up to Kirk's room. Soon after Josephine leaves the room, the real crook, Craig, is found murdered in the library adjoining Dr. Kirk's room. Inspector Queen goes up to solve the case, while son Ellery's interest is in Josephine (smart boy) which he seems to be protecting. Ellery finds out that many of the stamps in Dr. Kirk's collection are counterfeit and when he goes to Craig's apartment he discovers his counterfeiting tools, but not before he is knocked unconscious by Howard Bronson, another stamp collector, who expressed a high interest in the Mandarin. The stamp is later found on an envelope sent by Martha, but when she is confronted with the evidence, she is mysteriously killed. Who is the murder of Craig and Martha Kirk. A good B mystery from the 30's, but the injection of humor and Quillan's aw shucks persona, really kill the movie at several occasions. Much of the plot and characters are not fleshed out as deeply as a Charlie Chan or Philo Vance film and the ending is rushed with explanations that would bewilder any audience member. The plot is a standard B mystery with the usual clichés and twists, which does work. Rating, based on B mysteries, 6.