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Arthur
Lempereur, young heir to a fabulous fortune, and literally bored to
death, has unsuccessfully attempted suicide nine times in one week.
Sitting aboard his yacht in Hong Kong with his fiancée, Alice, her
mother, Suzy, his faithful valet, Léon, and his Chinese guardian,
Mr. Goh, Arthur is informed by his business manager that he has just
lost all of his money in a stock market crash.
This gives Arthur good reason to attempt
suicide again; however, the wise Mr. Goh suggests that Arthur put
his death to a good cause and tells Arthur to insure himself for
$2,000,000 making Alice and himself the beneficiaries. Arthur
agrees, and since the insurance policy becomes invalid when death is
caused by suicide, Mr. Goh assures Arthur he will have him murdered
quickly and painlessly.
There ensues a wild chase which leads
from the waterfronts of Hong Kong to New Delhi to Nepal in the
Himalayas and back to Hong Kong as the killers attempt to catch
Arthur, who has changed his mind and now wants desperately to live
because he has fallen madly in love with a stripper named
Alexandrine. She strips by night and is a student of
archeology by day.
Finally, back on his yacht with
Alexandrine, Arthur learns that Mr. Goh never meant to kill him;
that the real intended killer was hired by his future mother-in-law,
Suzy, who wanted to protect her daughter's insurance claim.
The two men tailing him so closely were from the insurance company,
and his stocks did not crash—they doubled!
Notes
The film is based on the novel Les tribulations d'un Chinois en
Chine by Jules Verne (Paris, 1879). It opened in Paris in
December 1965 as Les tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine;
running time: 110 min; in Rome in December 1965 as L'uomo di Hong
Kong; running time: 110 min. |
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