The Fatal Hour

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Boris Karloff, Lita Chevret, James C. Morton, Marjorie Reynolds, and Grant Withers in The Fatal Hour (1940)

When Captain Street's best friend Dan Grady is murdered, Street receives help from Chinese detective James Lee Wong and local newspaper reporter Bobbie Logan.When Captain Street's best friend Dan Grady is murdered, Street receives help from Chinese detective James Lee Wong and local newspaper reporter Bobbie Logan.When Captain Street's best friend Dan Grady is murdered, Street receives help from Chinese detective James Lee Wong and local newspaper reporter Bobbie Logan.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.4/10

1.3K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 nomination

Photos32

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
William Nigh, who directed this and the other four films in Monogram Pictures' Mr. Wong series, was a prolific director of B movies, with more than 200 titles in his IMDb filmography. Before turning to directing, Nigh had been an actor, whose credits include being one of the original Keystone Kops in silent comedies for Mack Sennett.

Goofs
There's a completely different calendar on the wall behind Capt. Street's desk at about 0:02:58 than there was just 5 seconds before.

Quotes
Capt. Bill Street: I'll see you later.
Roberta 'Bobbie' Logan: Not me, flatfoot. Get one of the nurses out of the receiving hospital. They don't mind a pain in the neck.

Connections
Edited into Muchachada nui: Episode #1.12 (2007)

User reviews40

Review

Featured review

5/10

Formulaic Fun

The Mr. Wong series borrows somewhat from the Torchy Blane series at Warner Bros., i.e. feisty female reporter annoying the police officer/boyfriend, but also key to solving the crime. A comment was made elsewhere about that character here having a "Lois Lane" moment. Torchy Blane was allegedly the inspiration for the Lois Lane character of Superman comics.

A humorous, but probably unintentional, mistake shows up early in the film when Boris Karloff's darkening makeup is forgotten on his neck, giving him a two-tone head.

Although one can disparage Karloff for these films, keep in mind that film actors then, as now, need and want work. There are plenty of other well-experienced actors appearing in the Mr. Wong films, whom you can see in better films at better studios in the 1930s, or even in later films.

Although Karloff was making "B" films at Monogram and Columbia around this time, at least he had an "up" blip in his career when he played a major role in "Arsenic and Old Lace" on Broadway from 1941 to 1944.

This film is no worse than the formulaic TV series we have now, both comedy and drama, TV now being today's equivalent of the "B" movies of yesterday.