Mr. Wong, who appeared in twenty magazine stories, four issues of the Dell comic book Popular Comics and six movies — five of which are on this set — was said to be six feet tall, educated at Yale University and had an American-looking face. As an agent of the United States Treasury Department, he’s able to go between the world of white people and the secretive Tongs in San Francisco to solve cases that no one else can.

Aided by Captain William Street and reporter Roberta Logan, Mr. Wong is the star of this Kino Lorber box set. It has five movies on it and all look really great. They’re short and sweet — often under 70 minutes — and were made for Monogram Pictures, one of smallest studios in the golden age of Hollywood.

The films include:

Mr. Wong, Detective (1938): A series of murders leads Mr. Wong to an international spy ring that wants to bring poison overseas to aid the enemies of America.

The Mystery of Mr. Wong (1939): The Eye of the Daughter of the Moon, a rare precious gem, keeps getting stolen, leaving dead bodies of those foolhardy enough to purloin it.

Mr. Wong In Chinatown (1939): A secret plot to buy airplanes turns into murder, but Mr. Wong is on the case.

The Fatal Hour (1940): A cop is killed and it leads to stolen diamonds.

Doomed to Die (1940): A Romeo and Juliet romance, murder and actual footage of a boat sinking that cost hundreds of human lives.

The Kino Lorber blu ray release of the Mr. Wong Collection has new HD masters of each of the five films — with a 2K scan of the fine grains — and this comes with audio commentary for Mr. Wong, Detective by Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire.

I had a great time with this set, as the movies fly by and present a wise detective who always gets the job done. Now, we could argue that Boris Karloff is as far from Asian as Bela Lugosi — who also played a Mr. Wong, an evil one in 1934’s The Mysterious Mr. Wong — but we should try to enjoy this for what it is.

You can get the Mr. Wong Collection from Kino Lorber.