Chu-Chin-Chow

This jolly celebration of Oriental brutality confounds all expectations of restraint and respectability in pre-war British cinema. Blood-curdling murders, scantily-clad slave-girls, and an atmosphere of delicious terror induced by the ever-present threat of being boiled in oil, fed to the dogs or cut into tiny pieces by the magnetically vindictive villain, come as something of a shock even though they're all part of an unabashedly English pantomime tradition. Filmed with verve and audacity and a lavishness completely untypical of the small Gainsborough Studios, the result is a gutsy melodramatic piece of popular cinema.