Java Head and Tiger Bay - Double Feature

Both b/w movies were originally filmed in 1934 and both star exotic Anna May Wong in the title roles.
Optimum Classic have just released both movies on one DVD as a Anna May Wong Double Feature - an inspired move, especially since it’s not easy to find any films featuring Wong other then the two she is most famous for: the British silent melodrama Piccadilly (1929) and the Josef von Sternberg classic Shanghai Express (1932), in which she plays opposite Marlene Dietrich.

Java Head, which was adapted from the novel by Joseph Hergesheimer, is set in the port city of Bristol in the 1800s and the Java Head of the title is a sailing ship company, whose owner has two sons. One is a good-looking seafarer in love with a local girl he can’t marry due to a long-running feud between their fathers. The other son, who prefers the life of a ‘landlubber’, not only seeks to convert to steamships (to the fury of his father) but secretly deals in contraband.

Seeing how the seafaring brother cannot marry his local sweetheart, he embarks on a lengthy voyage including the Far East, were he meets and marries a noble Chinese lady, Princess Taou Yuen, and returns to Bristol with her. Enter Anna May Wong. It’s some time into the film before her entrance, but what an entrance it is: dressed in sumptuous traditional Chinese outfit, she is no doubt the most outlandish looking creature that Bristol ever has seen. Displaying a humble yet proud mannerism and loyally devoted to her husband, locals as well as her husband’s family never miss an opportunity to express their disapproval of this mixed-race marriage they feel scandalizes their hometown and reputation. Initially defending his wife’s honour, our good-hearted seafarer eventually comes to realize to bring back his Chinese princess to narrow-minded Bristol and it doesn’t take long before his desire for his unattainable local sweetheart is fuelled again, while his no-do-good brother has his eyes firmly set on the exotic princess.

Also starring Elizabeth Allan, John Loder, Edmund Gwenn and Ralph Richardson amongst the main cast, Java Head holds enough drama and intrigue to fill out at least three episodes of The Onedin Line and EastEnders together.

In Tiger Bay, Anna May Wong plays a different beast altogether, namely Lui Chang, a cultured and elegant but also tough-as-nails nightclub owner whose sleazy premises grace the low-life spot of Tiger Bay. One day, Michael (Victor Garland), a young Englishman, visits and intervenes when a local criminal protection racketeer targets the nightclub. He comes to the defence of Liu Chang’s young English foster-sister, who is harassed by the gang, and falls in love with her. But the gang, lead by nasty thug Olaf (Henry Victor), have only just started their campaign against Lui and her club. Soon, kidnap and murder arise as regular as Lui’s exotic dance routines. She, in turn, won’t be intimidated by a Olaf’s gang and takes the law into her own hands in order to defend her business.

Also starring Henry Victor and Lawrence Grossmith, Tiger Bay is highly entertaining and Anna May Wong once again demonstrates why her name has gained cult status.

(Please note that both movies are in Mono 2.0)