Review of The Terror of the Tongs (1961) by Allan C — 16 Dec 2016

It's been quite a while since I've seen so many non-Asian actors playing Asian characters. Usually old films have one or two Asian characters at most and often played by an anglo character. This still happens and happened as recently as Cameron Crowe's "Aloha" when the redheaded Emma Stone played an Asian character.

But in this film, set in China, it appeared that just about every Asian character was a heavily made up anglo actor, which was pretty distracting. Anyhow, despite the blatant racism, this was a pretty entertaining little potboiler about a sea captain investigating the murder of his daughter and ends up taking on the titular Hong Kong crime syndicate, lead by the inscrutable oriental Christopher Lee, who's quite good as the villain.

And for a film made in 1961, there are some surprisingly gruesome moments, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since Hammer frequently pushed the boundaries of sex and violence in their films of the 1960s.

Overall, there's nothing all that special about this film, but is entertaining enough.