The Terror of the Tongs is a 1961 British adventure film directed by Anthony Bushell and starring Geoffrey Toone, Christopher Lee and Yvonne Monlaur.
In the year of 1910, Hong Kong members of the secret Red Dragon Tong crime family protect their identities by murdering Helena Sale, the daughter of Captain Jackson Sale, a British sea officer who vows revenge and defies the spread of fear created by the tongs. Helped by a mysterious beggar and a young serving girl named Lee, Sale discovers there is an inside traitor who has been giving vital information to the tongs, thus making them one step ahead of Sale's findings...
Tropes;
- Alliterative Title
- Better to Die than Be Killed: As the angry mob led by Beggar bursts into his lair ready to kill him, Chung King stands up to face them, and allows his enforcer Tang Hao stab him in the back.
- Book Safe: Ming hides the list of tong members in a concealed pouch at the back of the book of Chinese poetry he gives to Captain Sale as a gift for his daughter.
- Cane Fu: When Lee recognises Harcourt as a member of the Red Dragon tong, he attacks her with his walking stick.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Chung King has Captain Sale subjected to a torture known as bone scraping, where fine needles are inserted into his flesh and dragged along his bones.Chung King: Have you ever had your bones scraped, Captain? It is painful in the extreme I can assure you.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: After she leaps in front of him and takes the hatchet that was intended for him, Captain Sale holds Lee in his arms while she dies. With her dying breaths, she manages to tell him that Harcout is The Mole for the Red Dragon tong.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Beggar is an agent of an underground movement against the tongs who poses a beggar on the waterfront. He is never referred to as anything other than 'Beggar'.
- Fingore: The Calling Card of the Red Dragon Tong is cutting the fingers off the hand of their victims.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Lee kills Dr. Fu Chao by injecting him with the syringe full of cyanide he had attempted to use on Captain Sale.
- Hooks and Crooks: When Beggar incites the dock workers to rise up against the Red Dragon Tong, several tong members are killed by longshoremen wielding bale hooks.
- Human Trafficking: Tang How boasts to Captain Sale that the Red Dragon Tong runs the largest white slavery operation in the world.
- The Mole: District Commissioner Harcourt is in league with the Red Dragon Tong and is feeding them information about Captain Sale's investigation.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The sinister Dr. Fu Chao.
- Obfuscating Disability: Beggar is an agent of an underground movement against the tongs. He fakes having a crippled leg, hobbling around on a crutch, and wears an eyepatch when posing as a beggar on the waterfront.
- Opium Den: The Red Dragon Tong operates a string of opium dens across Hong Kong. Captain Sale visits one of them in the course of his investigation.
- Ransacked Room: When he is called to his ship following the murder of his first officer, Sale discovers that his cabin has been ransacked. When he returns home, he finds his house has also been ransacked and his daughter murdered.
- Sickbed Slaying: Dr. Fu Chao takes the place of Captain Sale's usual doctor and attempts to kill him with a lethal injection as he is recovering from the Cold-Blooded Torture Chung King subjected him to.
- Slipping a Mickey: When Sale visits Lee Chung's, he is given a glass of drugged brandy. When he wakes up, he is in front of the tong head Chung King.
- Taking the Bullet: Lee leaps in front of Captain Sale and takes the hatchet that was intended for him in a ceremonial killing.
- Tap on the Head: Lee saves Sale's life by knocking Tang How out by hitting him over the head with a vase when Tang How is holding Sale at gunpoint.
- The Triads and the Tongs: In 1910, Hong Kong members of a secret Tong crime syndicate protect their identities by murdering the daughter of a British sea captain who vows revenge.
- Yellowface: The leader of the Red Dragon Tong is played by Christopher Lee, with Ewen Solo, Roger Delgado and Charles Lloyd-Pack as his main underlings, and Yvonne Monlaur as the hero's half-Chinese love interest. Burt Kwouk, in a tiny role as a diplomat, is the only actor of Asian descent with a speaking part.
- Yellow Peril: The Big Bad Chung King is very much a poor man's Fu Manchu; even down to being played by Christopher Lee in Yellow Face.
