The Terror of the Tongs (1961)

Hammer goes to Hong Kong without leaving England,  22 December 2020

After his daughter is murdered, a sea captain seeks revenge against a powerful organized crime group known as the Red Dragon Tong.

The Terror of the Tongs isn’t the kind of film you normally think of when Hammer Films comes to mind.  There is nothing supernatural, there is no gothic atmosphere, and this isn’t a recycled Universal horror film.  What you will find instead is a reasonable dose of that infamous Hammer blood, England standing in for a foreign land (Hong Kong in this case), and Christopher Lee.  So while it may not be typical Hammer, it is still undeniably Hammer.  

Overall, the movie is reasonably entertaining.  The revenge story moves at a good pace with plenty of action.  It’s all helped by a relatively short runtime that works in the movie’s favor.  I'm not sure the story could have sustained another 15 minutes.  The sets, although stage-bound as you’d expect with Hammer, do evoke a different place.  And the acting, if you can get past the yellow-face, is about what you’d expect.  Lee may be the known quantity, but in all honesty, he doesn’t do that much.  The film is held together by Geoffrey Toone’s performance.  He’s quite good as the man on a mission.  

 

6/10