The head of one of the warring Tong gangs is named Wang Chung. I guess everybody will have fun tonight. Everybody Wang Chung tonight.Our heroes get caught in the middle of a dastardly plot run by a rogue British Col. Allenby Smythe--what is it with all these rogue colonels? Smythe is the fifth or sixth one in sixteen episode.-- to kidnap a princess and use her as a puppet to rule China. The whole plan is to be financed by a lucrative opium trade.
One problem--the opium trade was legal until 1875. While the timing of the series is mostly ambiguous, past episodes mentioning the Franco-Prussian War and the reign of Maximilian of Mexico sets the date around 1870-72. A minor nitpick, I suppose, but annoying to a history buff. Opium was made illegal in 1875 San Francisco more as anti-Chinese sentiment than any beef with narcotics, but now I am just showing off by mentioning that.
“The Night the Dragon Screamed” is one of the most complexly plotted episode of the series. Jim and Artie are hardly ever on top of things and are usually at the mercy of deadly spikes, a laughably fake looking cobra, a Sword of Damocles contraption, or a pit for boiling lobsters. I kid thee not.
Artie spends the bulk of the episode dudded up as a fake Chinese in an impersonation that would make Charlie Chan blush. Ah, mid060’s television. A much more innocent time.
The princess turns out to be pro-West, both in our culture and in the Secret Service agent. The two spend a lot of time smooching when West is actually facing a midnight deadline to save Artie from certain death. Priorities, man! Priorities! I modern times, the pricess would be munching hamburgers and singing Lady Ga Ga songs while lamenting her prospective life of banging gongs ad tos of rice.
“The Night the Dragon Screamed” is a fun episode made better by the presence of a hatchet man sent to kill Jim, but saved by him instead, who turns out to be an ally occasionally, but a traitor more often. I am not certain why I found that so amusing, but I did.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
