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Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

5.7 | Nov 18, 1940 (US) | Crime, Mystery, Thriller | 01:02

A Slight Case Of Murder... Solved by Jimmy Wong!

In the middle of a pictorial lecture on his recent expedition to the Mongolian Desert, Dr. John Benton,the famous explorer, drinks from the water bottle on his lecture table, collapses and dies. His last words "Eternal Fire" are the only clue Chinese detective Jimmy Wong and Captain Street of the police department have to work on.

Featured Crew

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Screenplay
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Director of Photography
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Characters

Cast

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Keye Luke
James Lee Wong
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Lotus Long
Win Lee, Benton's Secretary
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Grant Withers
Police Captain Street
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Charles Miller
Dr. John Benton / Cyrus Benton in Newspaper (as Charles Miller)
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Huntley Gordon
Dr. Norman Wilkes
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Virginia Carpenter
Louise Benton
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John Dilson
Charlie Frasier
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Paul McVey
Detective Grady

Reviews

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CinemaSerf
6 | Jun 23, 2022
This is quite a fun little murder mystery with Keye Luke on good form as "Jimmy Wong" who is brought in by police captain "Street" (Grant Withers) to investigate the murder of a renowned archaeologist who had only just returned from an expedition to Mongolia. Who did what to whom all revolves around the search for a mysterious scroll that he had recovered from a tomb. which may reveal the location of some large oil deposits. It's actually quite well written with plenty of twists and turns and it's not so very easy to guess the culprit until near the end of this short feature. Luke isn't as good as Karloff was in the earlier "Wong" films, but I found him easily as good and entertaining a detective in this as Sydney Toler was in many of the "Charlie Chan" films, in which Luke also appeared.