Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

The Terror of the Tongs Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 1, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of Hammer Volume Three: Blood & Terror.

Ask even the most casual film fan what comes to mind when they hear the name Hammer Studios (and/or Hammer Film Productions, Ltd., as it is officially known), and my hunch is very few if any of them would answer “war movies”, since (as is probably obvious) Hammer has long been known for its Gothic horror output. But Hammer did make some war movies, albeit not necessarily always with the same focus that some of the major Hollywood studios did through the years. Powerhouse Films’ Indicator series has been bringing out rather interesting aggregations of Hammer properties, including Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning!, Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent and the recently reviewed Hammer Volume Four: Faces of Fear (Hammer Volume Five: Death & Deceit is coming out just as this review is going live). This third volume is an unusual assortment of Hammer films that all feature some kind of war as at least a tangential element, with two of the films offering plots that are putatively connected to World War II, and two others reaching further back into the mists of history to detail other kinds of battles and/or skirmishes.

As I mentioned in the The Stranglers of Bombay Blu-ray review, that film and this one are linked both by dint of the fact that they purport to give “historical” depictions of British interactions with various colonies, but due to the fact that supplements included with each release get into the aspect of some questionable casting decisions made with regard to some of the “ethnic” characters in each film. In that regard, The Terror of the Tongs also shares the characteristic of Caucasian actors tasked with playing Asian roles that is also part of The Camp on Blood Island. That said, as some of the supplements on this disc make the case, Hammer evidently saw The Terror of the Tongs as a kind of quasi-follow up to The Stranglers of Bombay, though any real connection between them seems ephemeral at best.

The Terror of the Tongs focuses on early 20th century Hong Kong, with Christopher Lee kind of warming up for later efforts like The Face of Fu Manchu by playing a Red Tong villain with the perhaps unfortunate name of Chung King. Chung King’s thugs (sorry to reference The Stranglers of Bombay again, I couldn’t resist) murder the daughter of local British official Captain Jackson Sale (Geoffrey Toone), and Sale sets off on a quest for vengeance.

Perhaps surprisingly, this was the first film to offer Lee top billing, and he makes the most of a sneering, suave but almost dismissive arch villain. The film evidently underwent some ham handed censorship, as several of the supplements get into, and so some scenes, including a frankly confusing sequence supposedly documenting the murder of Sale’s daughter, suffer from continuity problems and a general lack of information imparted. The film also has the same kind of almost overheated cartoonish ambience that also informed The Stranglers of Bombay, and it even shares some of its questionable casting by once again offering Marne Maitland in a so-called "exotic" role (and of course some might want to include Lee himself in the questionable casting category, though as some of the supplements point out, it's probably Charles Lloyd-Pack who looks the worst in the supposed "Asian" makeup).

Kind of hilariously, this film, while often purported to be even a kind of remake of The Stranglers of Bombay, was actually (according to supplements on this disc) born out of a set, of all things. Hammer had spent a great deal of money on the seaside set seen repeatedly in The Terror of the Tongs, having built it for the pilot of a tv show with Richard Basehart I’ve frankly never heard of, and they wanted to get more bang for their buck, so Jimmy Sangster evidently crafted the entire film out of that necessity.

The Terror of the Tongs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Terror of the Tongs is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Powerhouse Films' Indicator imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Powerhouse's insert booklet contains only the following pretty generic verbiage about the transfer:

Sony's HD remaster was the source of this Indicator edition. The film's original mono audio was remastered at the same time.

This is the only color film included in this volume of Hammer productions, and the palette looks rather nicely suffused throughout, though there are some minor density fluctuations at times. Primaries, notably that vaunted Hammer red, tend to look very vivid throughout the presentation, and some of the purples and violets in particular are extremely evocative. The high definition presentation is arguably not helpful to some of the makeup effects, particularly in some of the close-ups. Kind of hilariously, given the above mention of this film being "founded" on a pre-existing set, some of what look like matte shots or other process photography including that very set are among the shoddiest looking moments in this presentation, though some are admittedly part of opticals, like sequences involving a series of dissolves. On the whole though, this is a nicely organic looking presentation, with no compression anomalies that I noticed.

The Terror of the Tongs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Terror of the Tongs features an enjoyable LPCM Mono track. James Bernard once again goes the "Orientalism" route, here offering huge splashes of percussion instruments that can sound a tad bright at times. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the presentation, though as is discussed in some of the supplements, some of the evidently forced edits can lead to odd segues in the soundtrack a couple of times.

The Terror of the Tongs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with writer Jimmy Sangster, assistant editor Chris Barnes and film historian Marcus Hearn


• Hatchet Men: Inside The Terror of the Tongs (1080p; 21:30) is another excellent background piece by Marcus Hearn, featuring Alan Barnes and Jonathan Rigby.


• Hammer's Women: Yvonne Monlaur (1080p; 6:02) features Dr. Laura Mayne discussing the actress.


• Introduction by Stephen Laws (1080p; 8:03)


• Hammer and Tongs (1080p; 10:21) is another fun if cheekily titled analysis of the film's score by David Huckvale, this time exploring James Bernard's work on the film.


• Shear Terror (1080p; 2:40) is an audio interview with assistant costume designer Yvonne Blake. This plays to snippets from the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:30)


• Image Gallery (1080p)

The Terror of the Tongs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Terror of the Tongs is another kind of bizarre Hammer effort that may have seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least a prudent use of a pre-existing resource like an expensive set, but which is probably inevitably going to strike some modern day eyes as problematic in various ways. The film does offer appealing production design, and Lee is fun as a debonair but snarling villain, but the story is hokey from start to finish, and things aren't helped by some odd edits evidently forced by the censors. Technical merits are solid and the supplementary package excellent for those considering a purchase.