As I said last month in
my review of 1959's The Stranglers of Bombay, Hammer recycled that film's plot for 1961's
The Terror of The Tongs, simply relocating the action from 19th Century India to early 20th Century Hong Kong.
After his daughter (Barbara Brown) is slain by Tong gangsters searching for an incriminating list of their key members, British sea captain Jackson Sale (Geoffrey Toone) wages a one-man crusade against the secret organisation, punching his way through Hong Kong's underworld with the subtly and diplomacy of Robert E Howard's Sailor Steve Costigan.
There's no denying that this is an exciting thriller, but even with the appearance of an anti-Tong coalition among the Chinese community (
who see Sale as a useful weapon to direct against their foes), the racism on display is inescapable.
In his first headlining role for Hammer, Christopher Lee - as Red Dragon Tong leader Chung King - gets to test-drive the problematic "Chinese" make-up he would later make famous in the
Fu Manchu series of movies.
There are plenty of Asian actors in the large cast, although primarily as extras, but the bulk of the key Chinese roles have gone to Western performers in "yellow-face".
The death of Sale's daughter, Helena, is also pretty much the text book definition of "
fridging" as she turns up purely to be killed off in the next scene and give Jackson his motivation for wanting to bring down the Tongs.
He channels his grief through his fists, and while occasionally Sale uses his wits, his main investigative tool is violence.
Coming in at just over an hour and a quarter running time, there's no hanging around in
The Terror of The Tongs, so when Sale rescues the gorgeous half-Chinese/half-French Lee (the charismatic Yvonne Monlaur, probably best known for her lead role in
The Brides of Dracula) random romance is clearly on the cards.
However (
slight spoilers for a 60-year-old film), her ultimate character arc was both unexpected and slightly gratuitous.
Not only does
The Terror of The Tongs reuse the plot of
The Stranglers of Bombay, but
Doctor Who's Roger Delgado is also back, this time as Chung King's number two, essentially the same role he played in the earlier movie.
Shot in vibrant colour, in contrast to the crisp black and white footage of
The Stranglers,
The Terror of The Tongs is also available as part of
Powerhouse's high-end Indicator range of Blu-Rays.
The use of colour means director Anthony Bushell is able to splash around plenty of bright, red blood, but the most horrific scene - a sequence where Sale falls into the hands of Chung King and is ritually tortured - is so well framed that it made me squirm without actually showing any graphic details of the "bone-scraping" needles that were being used.
A two-fisted pulp adventure, with unfortunate casual racism throughout, the central story of
The Terror of The Tongs remains engaging (
if simplistic), providing you can acknowledge the uncomfortable casting decisions of the time when it was shot.
