Surprisingly much better than I expected, this expose of Chinese mob rule is filled with the typical clichés, often considered offensive today, yet well told in a dramatic story of tradition and honor not quite mixing together. Lois Wilson is a young writer, allegedly on the verge of suicide, who is rescued by newspaper editor Grant Withers and desperately seeks to become a decent reporter and get off the "sob sister" columns. She decides to take on the Tong, involved in an illegal immigrant smuggling racket, and what she finds leads her to bigger fish to fry.
A secondary story has the head of the local Tong blackmailing his daughter's noble suitor into committing murder to get his approval, and this leads to danger for both Wilson and Withers whose fiancée (Dorothy Revier) somehow hits into all of this. It's a lot of plot for an hour long film, and impressively wrapped up with minimal clichés and only a few offensive moments. Coming in the year of MGM's "The Mask of Fun Manchu", Warner Brother's "The Hatchet Man", RKO's " Thirteen Women", and coming off the trail of Paramount's own "Fu Manchu", this poverty row entry is surprisingly the best of the bunch.
A secondary story has the head of the local Tong blackmailing his daughter's noble suitor into committing murder to get his approval, and this leads to danger for both Wilson and Withers whose fiancée (Dorothy Revier) somehow hits into all of this. It's a lot of plot for an hour long film, and impressively wrapped up with minimal clichés and only a few offensive moments. Coming in the year of MGM's "The Mask of Fun Manchu", Warner Brother's "The Hatchet Man", RKO's " Thirteen Women", and coming off the trail of Paramount's own "Fu Manchu", this poverty row entry is surprisingly the best of the bunch.