The Sky Dragon

Cabin Clue

The Sky Dragon
USA 1949 Directed by Lesley Selander
Monogram (via Warner Archive) DVD Region 1 

I don’t think it was deliberate but, for one reason or another, The Sky Dragon was the last of the 47 Charlie Chan talkies made between 1929 and 1947. This brought to an end what had been a ‘mostly’ profitable series of films, albeit via a law of diminishing returns as the series went through cheaper studios and shrinking budgets as it wore on. Original number one son Lee Chan, as played by Keye Luke, is back as the only one of the Chan offspring present, playing opposite Roland Winters in his last go at the honourable Hawaiian detective. Luke had returned a few films previously and, while he was once the juvenile comic relief, putting him back in here in that spirit maybe made a bit less sense because he and his on screen father Winters, were both the same age.

Also back, of course, is the later series regular Mantan Moreland, continuing his wisecracking, perpetually fearful chauffer routine as Birmingham Brown although, it has to be said, the only decent scenes he gets in this are opposite Lousie Franklin, who plays the maid of one of the murder suspects in this film.

There’s also, much to my delight, the inclusion of actress Noel Neil in the proceedings. Noel Neill was, as you no doubt know... the original Lois Lane, first starring in that role opposite the very first cinematic Superman Kirk Alyn in the theatrical serials Superman (1948) and Superman Vs Atom Man (1950). This was one of a few movies she made in between those two serials. Of course, she also went on to reprise her role as Lois Lane opposite George Reeves in the 1950s TV show The Adventures of Superman from the second series onwards (Phyllis Coates left the role after her first season). She later turned up in a “blink and you’ll miss it” cameo as Lois Lane’s mother in one of the extended cuts of the 1978 motion picture Superman The Movie (again opposite Kirk Alyn, playing Lois' dad) and later performed as an old, dying woman ripped off by Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor in the opening of the 2006 movie Superman Returns. I think she also got some ‘Super’ TV cameos under her belt as well (before her death last year at the age of 95).

Alas, Noel is wasted in this movie as she doesn’t have much to do except provide a friendly female face and provide Charlie Chan with helpful information to clear her fiance of the murder charge when the occasion arises but... it was nice to see her here again, for sure.

This film starts off in an airplane as a man is murdered for the half a million dollars he is carrying while the rest of the crew and passengers are drugged, unconscious. These passengers include Charlie Chan and his number one son who then set about the rest of the movie trying to find the identity of the killer and, as usual, try to find the truth of the matter while the police jump at every opportunity to convict an innocent person of the crime. The police never really came off that well in these films, to be fair.

This is not the best of the Chan films I’ve seen, in all honesty, but it is pretty fast moving for it’s ‘just over an hour’ B-movie running time. The trail of the mystery is kept lively by a bunch of murders, incidents, tussles with possible suspects and Lee Chan pulling a wedding director from a fire after his garage has been set ablaze... with him in it... in an effort to destroy some camera negatives which will reveal the all too obvious, to this viewer at any rate, identity of someone in the film.

However, while the pacing is quite tight, I can’t say I was really all that impressed with the film and nothing much really stood out other than the occasional, expected, Charlie Chan aphorism which are peppered throughout the short running time with, it seemed to me, just a little less joy than they have been in some of the previous films. I liked the idea of the murder and theft taking place on the plane but would have really loved it if the entire movie had taken place in that plane with Charlie solving the crime before the plane lands and it would have given the perpetually cash strapped Monogram Pictures a cheaper budget, too, I would suspect... having to shoot on only one set. However, after the first quarter of an hour the action moves out of the plane and I suppose it’s easier to keep the pacing up when your characters can go from incident to incident as the story progresses. Monogram had been going since 1924 but released their last movies in 1952, so things must have been really tight by this point.

It would have been nice to see the series continue on after The Sky Dragon, although there was still a little life in the character after these films had come to an end. For me, those early days of Warner Oland playing Charlie opposite Keye Luke as a much more youthful “number one son” are still my favourites... but I honestly don’t mind Sydney Toler and Roland Winter’s takes on the character and I will probably be rewatching these movies over and over until I die (which hopefully won’t be very soon). Take this movie for what it is, a mildly entertaining entry into a great series of classic Hollywood detective yarns. And...  just by way of a heads up... although it’s the last in that series of Charlie Chan films, I’m not planning on making this my last review of a Charlie Chan movie. Watch this space.

The Feathered Serpent

Chan Clan Phooey

The Feathered Serpent
USA 1948 Directed by William Beaudine
Monogram/Warner Bros DVD Region 1

So here we have The Feathered Serpent, the penultimate of the six films where Roland Winters played Charlie Chan and, although it’s not an especially entertaining edition of the exploits of the world’s most famous Chinese American detective, it is one which is quite unique in the history of the series. It’s the only one of the original run of films which spanned nearly two decades and various companies to feature two of Charlie Chan’s sons in the same film, together. Namely Number Two son, played by Victor Sen Yung and, after a very long absence, Keye Luke as Number One Son.

Now Keye Luke was an artist who used to paint posters for various movies until he shot to fame in the original US run of Charlie Chan films opposite Warner Oland, my favourite Chan man, in the title role. I always remember him from watching the Charlie Chan films as a kid where he used to run in on a scene, usually thinking he’d solved the mystery and yelling something along the lines of “Gee, pop!” When Oland died unexpectedly, Luke had already shot some scenes for the next movie and these were transplanted, with new scenes added, when the Charlie Chan film was hastily rewritten and turned into one of the Mr. Moto films with Peter Lorre. The 1938 film Mr. Moto’s Gamble, to be precise, which I reviewed here. After the films were recast with Sydney Toler, Luke declined to continue in the series and so number two and three sons replaced him, on and off, for the majority of the Toler films. But, one decade later, Keye Luke was back in the series, opposite Roland Winters... regardless of the fact that he was slightly older than the man playing his father at this time (many years later, Luke would go on to voice Chan himself in the Charlie Chan cartoon show).

Now, with Mantan Moreland continuing in his role as the Chan family chauffer Birmingham Brown, you might think, with the three of them, that there are now way too many sidekicks for a Chan film to comfortably handle and, to tell the truth, you’d be right. How many 'on screen dummies' do you need to explain things to under the banner of audience exposition? I might be a little harsh on the idea, actually, because the writing on this one isn’t that great, even though it’s a remake of a former 1937 Western, The Riders of the Whistling Skull.

Roland Winters seems a little too laid back in this one, it seems to me and... I have to wonder what he thought of Keye Luke returning to the role. It’s a bit of a puzzler because I’m presuming they really went to town ageing Winters on this one in some subtle way because, as I indicated above, Keye Luke who is seen playing his offspring is, actually, five months his senior. Something only Hollywood could be bold and stupid enough to get away with.

This one isn’t so much a mystery story, since the villain behind the plot of this tale of a doomed archeological expedition reveals himself fairly early on in the proceedings. The set up is such that, with Chan and his team on vacation in Mexico, they find themselves suddenly embroiled in a plot when the man they rescue from the roadside turns out to be one of two missing scientists that another expedition are trying so hard to find. That means it’s up to Chan to help them find the scientist in question and also find the hidden Aztec lair full of buried treasure. So, yeah, the usual stuff but the execution of it here leaves a lot to be desired, I think.

There’s lots to groan about in this one, too. When the lights go out in a house at night and the first murder is committed under cover of darkness, it only takes the lighting of one single candle to suddenly plunge the set back into a fully lit shot set up. Oh dear.... still, Monogram were not known for being particularly brilliant film studios, that’s for sure. These Monogram films had a much smaller budget than the 20th Century Fox produced movies and, although some of the Monogram Chan films are excellent, the lack of production value really shows on this one.

Another groaner is when Chan and his sons, with Birmingham Brown tagging along, decide to join the expedition, Number One and Two sons immediately dress up in safari suits, along with obligatory pith helmets... this looks really silly. Actually, one of the great problems with this is the apparent lack of chemistry between Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung. This would be Yung’s final Charlie Chan film... although he’d started back when Sydney Toler first took over from Warner Oland, with Benson Fong also playing number three son in the films where Yung wasn’t available. Now, I’m not sure if this lack of dynamic interaction between the two is a personality thing or whether it’s because they have just been given some terrible lines to work with here. What I do know for sure is that, once again, Mantan Moreland’s portrayal as comic relief Birmingham Brown is fantastic and he somehow manages to get the best lines, again, in this one. For example, when he wants to get out of a scary situation he says to one of them... “There’s somebody I’d like to see outside.” When he’s asked who, he answers “Me!”. Similarly, in another moment when he’s at a disagreement about staying where the trouble is, he reminds his boss... “Oh Mr. Chan, we’re on vacation. Why don’t we vacate?”

So yeah, Moreland and his quick fire dialogue really helps hold the movie together, for me, but ultimately, this one does fall kinda flat. There’s a nice mixture of moving camera and also static edits in and out of compositions but, at the end of the day, there’s just not enough going on here and it’s just not well written. Even the comedy moment which you can see coming a mile off, with Moreland sitting on a rock and accidentally activating the entrance to the hidden temple, is not milked the way it might once have been and it’s just a genuinely dull affair, for most of the short running time. The Feathered Serpent is not a Chan film I’d recommend anybody start on but, if you are a die hard fan of the series, the fact that he has two sons sharing the screen with him is certainly interesting. If you want to get excited about Charlie Chan, however, go back to the Warner Oland movies first, would be my advice.

The Red Dragon

Justice Ink

The Red Dragon
USA 1945 Directed by Phil Rosen
Monogram/Warner Bros DVD Region 1

So it’s been a little while, again, since I reviewed a Charlie Chan film... mostly because of lack of availability of the few movies left in the series that had never been commercially released on a home video platform. Now, a pricey division of Warner Brothers called Warner Archives have finally released the remaining few Chan titles on DVD in a two disc, three movie set... comprising the remaining two Roland Winters titles (don’t worry... I’ll get to those in separate reviews) and this one, The Red Dragon, a missing gap from the Sydney Toler portrayals of the famous detective from Hawaii. Of course, regular readers will probably know my absolute favourite actor to portray Chan was Warner Oland, and there are actually a few of his earliest appearances in the character which are still not available. However, this is because those first few to star him are pretty much missing in action and, unless a bunch of film reels show up in some odd location someday... it looks like they’ll be lost forever. Still, I remember the unbelievable resurrection from the ashes of the, more or less, full original cut of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis a few years back so... you know... never say never.

The film starts off promisingly with an opening credits painting which is the most expressive and interesting I’ve seen used in the series. Depicting Toler’s head and shoulders in the bottom left and a big dragon taking up the rest of the frame where the credits overlay. It’s pretty great but, alas, even with late series regular Phil Rosen returning to directing duties, the quality of the rest of the movie does little to live up to the magnificence of this title card. However, from a film historian’s perspective, as opposed to just kicking back and enjoying the movie, this has its little bonuses too. I must ask a film historian to verify this, next time I see one.

So, yeah, there’s good and there’s bad and I’ll get to the worst thing first because it’s the very thing that reveals the silver lining in this one...

The acting is really terrible. Seriously, it’s so wooden at times it creeks and although these films don’t always have the best players, they’re usually better than this. Now, it may, to an extent, be something to do with the staging of the action because... well, there’s an awful lot of chance encounters which lead to conversations to drive along the plot. For instance, man comes out of lift, bumps into other man who happens to be waiting for the lift, and the two talk, standing statically, for the next minute or two. This is a really flat and less than dynamic way to fill the audience in on the plot details, it has to be said. But so is the line delivery of the majority of the actors, so I’m not letting them off the hook here, either.

The good thing though, from a historical viewpoint, is that the main regular cast are all very natural and comfortable and run rings around the rest of the players. Take Toler himself, for instance. You really do get a sense of just what a consummate and professional actor he was here. When you see how stilted almost everyone else is in this, you get the chance to compare him and realise just how good he was at bringing the Charlie Chan character to life. I got a real appreciation of Toler above and beyond the usual assumption that he will play the role as best he can, with this one.

Benson Fong returns here as number three son and, although he acquits himself quite well, he’s not given too much more to do than look puzzled and interested at his ‘Pop’s’ conclusions and deductions here. He also has the usual two hander comic relief moments but this time, instead of Mantan Moreland playing his ‘funny black man’ role as chauffer Birmingham Brown, Fong gets to partner up with Willie Best as Birmingham’s cousin Chatanooga Brown, who played in at least three Chan films and played Chatanooga at least twice. The difference between Best and Moreland is not too great, however. He comes across as a maybe slightly younger, slimmer version of Moreland himself, given exactly the same kinds of lines and scaredy cat actions to follow but without the occasional added wit of Mantan Moreland’s two man stand up comedy routine that the writers occasionally drew from and threw into the mix. Best is fine, however and, though his lines are pretty forgettable in this, he doesn’t let the side down when it comes to playing the part of the Chan family chauffer here. Of course, Moreland would return to the series again later.

We also have a lady who was joggling at my memory as I was watching her all the way through the film. She’s not exactly outstanding in this but I knew the face and I somehow managed to miss her name in the credits. Turns out she’s Carol Hughes, who Flash Gordon fans will recognise as being the second of the on-screen Dale Ardens, appearing in the third of the three initial Buster Crabbe serials, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, for Universal. This means that both of the serial actresses who played Dale Arden have appeared in a Charlie Chan film and both opposite Sydney Toler’s version of the character. Jean Rogers, who played Dale in both Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars starred in an earlier picture in the series, Charlie Chan in Panama. I know what you’re thinking... A Chan, A Plan, A Canal, Panama but... no, it doesn’t quite work like that.

The film is kinda hum drum in a lot of ways but it does, at least, have a genuine mystery at it’s heart and Charlie Chan flies to assist a character who has a history of solving cases with him but whom, in terms of actor and character, I could find no trace of within the history of the Chan movies. In this case, the first murder is committed in a room full of witnesses, as the victim gets a bullet for his troubles. It’s quite comical to watch him as he, in his final moments he takes the time to type a dying clue on his nearby typewriter. The trick is, though, that although one shot is heard, two bullets have been fired, on slugs which have never been rifled down to be fired from a firearm. And what is the significance of The Red Dragon Chinese ink at the scene of the first crime, which gives the movie its name? Is it something to do with the papers which tell of the mysterious, newly discovered,  ‘missing element’ that can cause even more widespread atomic damage than the recently exploded atom bomb?

Only Charlie Chan can work out the answers to this Chinese puzzle, which, of course, he does in the short running time of the film. The mystery behind the double shot bullets with no visible firearms is a bit of a dreary one but the idea of that particular challenge is a good one. The only other outstanding thing I noted in this viewing was that, once the killer has been unmasked, so to speak, by Chan on a staircase, he breaks free from the police and has a go at Chan himself. It’s unusual for Chan to get in on the action in these kinds of movies... that’s why he always has either number one, two or three son with him... because they’re young enough to get into fist fights. Here, Toler deftly grabs the leg of the killer and throws him downstairs. So a little unusual but welcome bit of mild action shenanigans for Chan in this one.

And that’s me done here. The Red Dragon is nowhere near one of the greats in terms of the Chan movies but people who like these films will no doubt want to check this one out. I’ve always liked the Charlie Chan movies and so this new Warners set is an unmissable release as far as I’m concerned. If you’re into the Chan then make haste and purchase honourable DVD collection before bird is no longer early enough for worm!

The Golden Eye

Miner Incursion

The Golden Eye

1948 USA

Directed by William Beaudine

Monogram - Warner Brothers 

DVD Region 1

Well it looks like this may be my last Charlie Chan movie review for a little while... until either Warners or some other interested party decide to commercially release the few missing movies I don’t have yet... or until I maybe go back to the start and watch them all over again.

This is the fourth of the six movies headlining Roland Winters in the role of Chan and, blimey, I’m finally starting to get used to the guy. Either he’s grown on me big time or the writing on this one is more able to play to the strengths of the actor and the way he performs the role. Either way, this movie is a pretty fun romp in the series and certainly the best of the Winters’ films I’ve seen to date.

One of the reasons for this may be because Chan is totally on the case in this one and has a lot more to do with the story than usual... not just leaving it to other characters to play out the running time. Don’t get me wrong, this film still has a lot of supporting players including the second of three regular appearances by Tim Ryan as police “Lt. Mike” as Chan calls him... who does a great job acting as a whacky,  undercover drunk (then immediately sobering when he visits Chan to exchange information). Some great and thoroughly entertaining acting going on here in this one. And, of course, the later Chan’s would be incomplete without the double act routines of Victor Sen Yung as Number Two Son and Mantan Moreland as chauffeur Birmingham Brown. Their scenes are a little less frequent than usual, which allows Winters and Ryan to shine, but their presence is still very much felt and a wonderful bit of business takes place at the start where they are dressed in dodgy cowboy outfits, packing to go under cover in a resort Western town (the Lazy Y Ranch) which is situated near The Golden Eye gold mine... which gives this film its title.

The plot is pretty obvious in both its execution and denouement, with a mystery involving a non profitable gold mine which has suddenly become very profitable for absolutely no reason... you pretty much figure out what is going on there right from the bat. However, as with a lot of these kinds of formulaic films with running characters, the plots are merely a skeleton to hang some nice scenes on which show the characters you know and love in their best light and, like I said earlier, this one’s a fun old romp.

There’s kind of a “surprise” villain in this one too but, honestly, if you didn’t see that one coming then you’ve not been watching enough mystery movies during your life. There are no "real" surprises here but plenty of smiles and chuckles and I’m really glad to see Winters really getting into the part here... even if Chan’s days as a running, cinematic icon were, sadly, numbered.

There’s a very strange bit right at the end where, after Chan has revealed the solution to the mystery and the various bad guys have been captured or met with death, Mantan Moreland gets a last say in the movie. Birmingham Brown steps right out of the scene, walks over to the camera and breaks the “fourth wall” by talking to the audience in a little “wrap up” monologue all his own. I don’t recall ever seeing this happen in a Charlie Chan movie before and I’m wondering if this was something the director was trying out as a feature to use in forthcoming films in the series. Not having access to the final two stories, as yet, this isn’t something I am going to easily find out, I suspect.

As Chan films go, The Golden Eye goes a long way to capturing the magic in a bottle of some of the Warner Oland and Sydney Toler movies in the series and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Just hoping somebody will release the missing Chans to us sometime soon though. I need my opium fix.

Shanghai Chest

Chesty Coffin

Shanghai Chest
1948 USA
Directed by William Beaudine
Monogram - Warner Brothers DVD Region 1

Okay, it’s Charlie Chan time again. This is the third of the Roland Winters “end phase” of the Charlie Chan films, which were so popular that they’d racked up over forty films by this point. This is also the third one I’ve seen him in and I think, either he’s giving a slightly better performance than usual and has relaxed into the role by this point or... it may be that I’ve just finally gotten used to him.

The plot in this one isn’t bad though and the general writing and pacing of it really brings out the best of the performers, one of whom I was pleased to see, is Tristram Coffin, one of my favourite B-movie, serial and TV guys... perhaps best known for his portrayal of the title character in the Republic serial King Of The Rocket Men. Even Victor Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland, as Number Two son and chauffeur Birmingham Brown respectively, are back on form. Their comedy shenanigans are at their usual pace but they seem to be slightly better suited to slotting into the general story of this one and, though they are certainly used as padding at one point to increase the running time of the movie, they certainly don’t feel like they are being used in this way.

The plot is intricate in that it involves a murderer who is a) covering the tracks of his real motive by serially murdering from a list of potential victims in alphabetical order and b) is leaving the fingerprints of a dead and executed victim of the justice system behind at the scenes of the crimes to make it look like “revenge from the grave”. It all works pretty well and because of the confusion with the dead man’s fingerprints, we even get a nice scene with Charlie Chan experimenting with various chemicals, latex gloves and fingerprints (with Birmingham’s assistance) to demonstrate the possibility that a dead persons fingerprints can, indeed, be transferred onto various places with the aid of science.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the plot used here before, more than once, possibly even on a Chan movie, but I can’t remember just where. It doesn’t really matter though. This isn’t going to appeal to a lot of people but those who are fans of the Roland Winters Charlie Chan films should appreciate this one as being one of his better ones. The aphorisms still aren’t up to scratch but Winters performance seems a lot more confident and a little faster in the role.

There’s a slightly stronger racist element at play too, but it falls into the “quaint and that’s the way it was back then” category for me... although I can see why people would get upset about it. I’m talking about a scene where Sen Yung sends Mantan Moreland into the windows of a house on a dark night instead of going himself because Mantan will be “harder to see in the dark”. Not a great moment of political correctness, to be sure, but Moreland seems to have had no problem accepting his regular wage from the exploitation of his Brimingham Brown role (a role which he plays extremely well in most, if not all, of his Charlie Chan outings) and I doubt anyone was much worried about it at the time. I’m aware I’m watching this from a different historical context so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, to be honest.

The one thing which lets down the mystery side of things here is the fact that we always see the killer as a shadowy figure and never see his face until he is revealed at the end. However, since the murderer is fairly tall and stocky, and since the cast is fairly limited, it doesn’t take too long for the viewer to figure out who the real culprit is, on this one. There’s really only one person of that stature on the set... so that’s a bit of a shame. What is interesting, though, is that the film features a scene where the killer uses a stubby, six shooter revolver with a silencer screwed on the end. I don’t know when the silencer was first used on film but I bet this is one of the earlier appearances of it on screen (and if anyone does know... please drop me a line).

One strange thing is that there seems to be a few throwaway scenes with characters that feel like they are meant to lead to something bigger as links to clues but which are then dropped after they’ve been set up. A shady character in an insurance agency who gives Chan the runaround, for instance, makes a sinister phone call right after he leaves the building and then this is not mentioned again throughout the film. I think the script was possibly rewritten as it was being filmed and certain scenes became casualties of a hasty rewrite along the way. Not the best way to make a movie but that’s my guess and, after all, it was churned out by Monogram.

Another curio is that Charlie Chan is not from Shanghai and there is no “chest” in the film... which makes the title of the movie, being Shanghai Chest and all, possibly a greater mystery than the one which Chan and his colleagues are so intent on solving during the film’s short running time. But enough said on that one, I suspect. Cleverer minds than mine can work out the reasons why this is so.

These last attempts to capture Chan’s waning popularity by Monogram are nowhere near a match for the Warner Oland and Sydney Toler films, but Chan enthusiasts should enjoy this one and it’s certainly a lot better than Docks Of New Orleans (reviewed here). Give it a try sometime if you’re feeling particularly Chanthusiastic.

Docks Of New Orleans

What’s Up Docks?

Docks Of New Orleans
1948 USA
Directed by Derwin Abrahams
Monogram - Warner Brothers DVD Region 1

Warning: Ever so slight spoilers.

Okay, so Docks Of New Orleans is the second of Roland Winters' Charlie Chan films, made for Monogram after Fox had dropped the series a fair way into Sidnet Toler’s run. This is also only the second of the Winter’s films I’ve seen and so I’m still not all that familiar with this guy's way of playing the iconic role.

So I started watching this one and about 5 minutes in I’m getting strong feelings about it. For example, when one of the main characters goes into his office I said to myself... he’s not leaving that office alive. And I was right. And then I remembered how the murder was committed and I thought... wait a minute. I definitely haven’t seen this film before, have I?

Well I had and I hadn’t? Not only had I “kinda” seen it, it turns out that I “kinda” reviewed it on this blog too. This is a remake, it turns out, of one of the Boris Karloff Mr. Wong films... Mr. Wong, Detective, which I reviewed here. This is a less polished and even more sluggishly paced version of the same storyline and, if I didn’t know better (and I really don’t) then I’d say it was even shot on more or less the same redressed sets. Be interesting to find out if that was so.

Anyway, the murder weapons are not quite glass spheres in this one... they are actually glass radio tubes, which makes a little more sense. And the method of murder is still a brilliantly outrageous one. What happens is, when a certain pitch of note is played on a radio or instrument in the vicinity of a pre-planted radio tube, the glass shatters and releases a poison gas, instantly killing the occupant of the room near the radio. This is a particularly well staged murder in a scene (also, like many of them, found in the former Mr. Wong film) where a man is killed by the murderer pre-warning him of an attack by a letter. He is advised to lock himself in his study and not let anyone near him until police protection arrives. Of course, the victim does this and rings the police for help, thus summoning his own death when the pitch of the sound of the approaching police car shatters the glass tube and releases the poison gas. Maybe it’s a good definition of a poison pen letter?

The film is padded out with the usual routines of Victor Sen Yung as Number Two son (the name of the character played by this actor seems to change halfway through the series, for some reason) and Mantan Moreland continuing his Birmingham Brown role. Moreland even gets to do some of his two man stand up routine with another actor at one point in the film, but even this can’t liven up the proceedings that much and Tommy Chan and Brimingham Brown’s antics seem a little sedate and curtailed in this entry, compared to the comic heights they have sometimes reached in other entries in the series.

Roland Winters is kinda interesting as Chan... but perhaps not as suited to the role as his predecessors, it seems to me. He’s actually a quite good actor and he uses facial expressions well in the part. You can see his character thinking things through and reacting to things in a similar fashion, perhaps, to the way my favourite Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, performed the role. However, it has to be said that the performance is very slow paced and lethargically delivered. Many times I almost wanted to finish Winter’s lines for him because he seemed to be going so slowly.

The writing on this, also, is really not up to speed and I found the usual Chan aphorisms to be less amusing (read, less plain bonkers) than in previous films in the series. It’s hard to even pick them out as aphorisms in the dialogue to be honest... and that’s really a shame because it’s an essential signature of the Chan films and I’m sure Winters could have really got into the role if he was given more than these scripts to work with.

All in all, this is not too hot a Chan movie and I think I preferred the Mr. Wong version to this lukewarm remake. Still, it’s early days with the Winters' Chans for me and I look forward to seeing the next two films in this DVD set very soon.

Shadows Over Chinatown

Toler Powered

Shadows Over Chinatown
1946 USA
Directed by Terry O. Morse 
Monogram - Warner DVD Region 1

Shadows Over Chinatown is the penultimate of the Charlie Chan films to feature Warner Oland’s replacement, Sidney Toler. I reviewed his final film in the role, before Roland Winters continued in the series, in my review of The Trap (here).

The film starts off very promisingly... 13 passengers on a bus in a rainstorm, including Charlie Chan, Number Two son Jimmy and regular chauffeur Birmingham Brown (as played by Victor Sen Yung and comedian Mantan Moreland), are forced in to a stop to sort the bus out. This is almost a perfect recipe for a murder mystery, I thought to myself, as I was expecting the whole film to be set in the large passenger waiting room... however, it was not to be and is only a brief stop to get the plot up and running and also have someone make an attempt on Charlie Chan’s life.

Two things happened in this opening sequence. One was that I spotted, right off the bat, that one of the background passengers, who even has a couple of words, is an uncredited appearance by John Hamilton... who would, in later years, go on to play Perry White opposite George Reeves in the 1950s TV series, The Adventures of Superman. So it was nice seeing him for the brief amount of screen time he gets here.

The other thing that happened, which popped me right out of the movie, is the little bit where the passengers come into the interior of the bus station. In long shot, the aforementioned Hamilton is seen making a show of taking off his light grey raincoat, to reveal a much darker suit, and then removing his hat before sitting down at the right of the screen. However in the next shot, which is a close up grouping of the same set of characters, he is sitting with his raincoat on and all done up. If I could spot that on what may be my first viewing (I may have seen this one back in the 1980s, I’m not sure) then I’m sure audiences back in 1946 seeing it on a much larger screen would have spotted that error as well. It’s a big one and I had to wind it back to make sure I hadn’t got confused with the characters and believe what I’d just seen. Such a shame.

And then, after an attempted murder in which Chan is saved from certain death by the birthday watch his son gave him stopping a bullet, the bus journey continues and the plot switches to the big city... which is a shame really.

Now then, this film is really not terrible and had me entertained throughout... but it did seem a little tired and lazy for a Charlie Chan mystery, to be sure. For instance, the identity of the killer, who I’m not about to reveal here, is someone who I was suspicious of throughout the whole movie and so it came as absolutely no surprise when the killer is finally revealed. Which is a shame because I was really hoping I was wrong and there are enough suspects in this one... at least at the start of the film... by the end they’ve kinda thinned out a bit due to either transforming themselves into allies of Charlie Chan or turning up on the receiving end of a bullet or knife blade.

The usual comedy shenanigans of Victor Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland are all present and correct, although in some sequences they are starting to get a little surreal and, in all the sequences, I’m afraid that they feel like exactly what they are... comedy padding to puff up the running time.

All the performances are fine, though, and if the script does seem very lacking at some points, it’s at least convoluted enough to keep the characters up to various pursuits... even if the identity of the killer seems to be more and more obvious as each fresh corpse turns up. The dialogue seems equally jaded, for this humble viewer, too... with the usual Chan aphorisms and retorts seeming a little less cute or charming and a far cry from the sparkling pearls of wisdom that had turned up in other films starring either Oland or Toler in the role.

All in all though, this is not a spectacularly dull film and the overall feel, while maybe not a solid, mystery thriller, is still one of “they don’t make movies like these anymore”... while at the same time begging the dubious question of... “But, should they?”

I am, however, very pleased that Warner Brothers have seen fit to release this Region 1 boxed set of four, previously unreleased on commercial DVD, Charlie Chan films, which includes this Toler film and three of the Roland Winters entries. I’ve only ever seen one of Winter’s films, in a previously released box set, so am looking forward to watching the three in here to see how well he does in comparison to his predecessors. Reviews of those three will be coming soon... watch this space.

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story

A Proper Charlie

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honourable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.

Language English

ISBN: 0393069621

A friend of mine sent me this book for my birthday and I’m well pleased to have it and have read it. I’ve always liked Charlie Chan... ever since my first experiences at a very young age with the old Hanna Barbara cartoon, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (with Charlie voiced by Keye Luke... no stranger to the world of Charlie Chan as he played Number One Son Lee Chan opposite Warner Oland, Roland Winters and Peter Lorre in one of the Mr. Moto films). This lay the seeds so that later, in the early eighties, I was able to appreciate the old 1930s and 1940s Warner Oland and Sidney Toler movies that BBC2 used to screen at 5.40pm on a Thursday evening.

Since then I’ve obviously read the six (only six were written!) original Earl Der Biggers novels and acquired as many of those old movies as I’ve been able to get. I’ve also managed to grab the movies featuring two of Charlie Chan’s spiritual cousins, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong, who doubtless made it into movie versions riding the back of the success of the Charlie Chan series.

In this book, the writer traces the lineage of the character and concentrates not so much on Charlie Chan himself, but with the history of the Chinese in Hawaii and Honolulu (Charlies stomping ground) and more specifically with legendary police officer Chang Apana who was said to be the real life inspiration for Charlie Chan and was known as such by his contemporaries... and still is to this day.

Now I’m not a great one for history books but this one is pretty entertaining and readable and I’m very glad to have read this little peak into Chinese culture and its racial tensions. Details of a post-Chang Apana murder case scandal which was very much racially manipulated to get the “incorrect” but “right” verdict fair made my blood boil (as I hope it would any modern reader) and the delightful story of a distinguished Naval Captain meeting his untimely death by being killed by the celebratory cannon fire meant to salute and welcome him in his honour as his ship pulled into harbour, although ultimately tragic, was the source of much mirth for this reader.

I think the links between Earl Der Biggers character and Chang Apana are kind of tentative though, to be honest. He’d already written the first three of the six novels before meeting and getting to know Chang Apana and, though a case is made that the newspaper article of a heroic arrest made by a Chinese Police Officer in Hawaii that inspired the inclusion of Bigger’s Charlie Chan character in the novel The House Without A Key may well have been, in fact probably was, an arrest carried out by Chang Apana... I personally don’t see this as validation that the claim that Chang Apana was the real life basis for Charlie is a correct one. However, when Biggers and Apana were finally introduced, it’s quite clear that Biggers was more than happy to let that idea stand and even perpetuate it himself. Good publicity, after all, is money in the bank.

This book is a great little, almost random, summary of Chinese people in American culture and this also includes lightly touching on other fictional characters such as Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu (who had also been played by Warner Oland a few times on screen). I’ve read the Fu Manchu novels myself and think they’re brilliant pulps (along the lines of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories) and I’m glad I now know that the English (very much English and staying put in his own country thank you very much, more tea guv’nor?) author Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, died ironically of one of the first strains of Asian flu on these shores. That has a nice circularity to it.

The downside of this book for me is the persistent racial element. The writer Yunte Hunag is a Chinese lecturer living in America and he seems to have written this book coming from a place which admires the exploits of the fictional detective and his perceived ancestry while being torn by the undeniable racial stereotype which the character falls in. This is okay and since I’ve never been racially oppressed (as far as I can remember) it’s really not my right to judge anyone who has been oppressed in this way but, as I was reading, I got the feeling that the writer was kinda ramming this down my throat a little and getting very assertive about the acceptance in popular culture of this kind of racial stereotype. This book seems like it’s been written as a defence of the Chinese race when, to someone like me, no defence is or would ever be needed for any race or species living on the planet. So I was possibly feeling a little perplexed at the constant reminders throughout the book and the constant necessity to compare racist slurs against Chinese folk with racial slurs against other races which the reader may find more popular or accessible (?) and come to an understanding of them as they compare to various intimations about the Chinese race.

Now I, and I would hope this is the case with most people, just tend to see Charlie Chan as an entertaining, Chinese hero... a keeper of the peace who polices his beat with a well aimed aphorism and less often the unsophisticated thuggery which gun play might bring. And that’s enough for me. It’s no more complicated than that. Yes, I can see that my “simplistic entertainment” view of Charlie (which to be fair to myself, is the purpose he was created for) doesn’t allow me to see or respond at the racial stereotypical characteristics embedded in our subconsciousness by such broad and possibly offensive portrayals such as these... and I take on board that this is probably Hunag’s precise point, that we’ve all been programmed by such characterisations from birth without realising it. By the same token, though, I would have never have even thought that there was any implied racial slur ingrained in these character portrayals unless I’d read this book and had them pointed out to me... and then again, that’s probably also something which Hunag wants me to realise. But it does rather delve too deep into a character and a stupid gaijin like myself would rather be entertained by a character and writer I admire rather than ponder the historical subtext of racial antagonism that such a character, almost certainly inadvertently on the part of Earl Der Biggers, conjures up in the minds of some. Maybe I’m just too simplistic a person to bother with such things. And maybe I should be more bothered in the future but, seriously, a persons race or skin colour is an unacceptable thing to base an opinion of a person on and so I just tend not to look at people in a racist manner. Thank goodness. At least not so far as I am aware.

Don’t get me wrong, Yunte Hunag is not completely gung ho about this slant on the character and he is trying to make the reader aware of this subtext while clearly loving the subject of his novel as much as any Charlie Chan fan in the world. I did, however, find it the one tiresome element to an otherwise absolutely excellent historical portrayal of the effects of America on Chinese culture.

Whichever way you cut it though, this is a great book and should definitely be on the “to read” pile if you’re a fan of the great, literary detective... even if it doesn’t cover the movies so much as the real life careers of Chang Apana and, to a certain extent, Earl Der Biggers. Definitely a resounding recommendation on this one!

Mr. Moto's Last Warning

Warning Shots

Mr. Moto's Last Warning 1939 USA

Directed by Norman Foster

20th Century Fox Region 1

And so onto the sixth of the eight Mr. Moto films to star Peter Lorre in the role... although I’ve just found out that although this one was the sixth to be shot, it was actually the seventh to be released. So not sure if I’m technically watching these in the right order again. Doh!

This is another interesting little curio of a movie and the plot resembles a Charlie Chan film I’ve seen, although I don’t remember its name and I’m not sure if it was made before or after this one. This film concerns itself with a plot by a gang of saboteurs wanting to bring the Second World War on by mining the entrance to the Suez Canal.

There’s lots going on here including a fake Mr. Moto sent to ward off suspicion who is murdered in the place of the “real” Mr. Moto (interestingly, the fake Mr. Moto is played by an actual Japanese actor as opposed to the “real” Mr. Moto being played by a Hungarian actor) and the earliest portrayal that I’ve seen, although I’m sure there must be more frequent and earlier examples in cinematic history, of a secret agent being murdered by having his air deliberately cut off while he is beneath the surface of the ocean in a diving bell... interesting stuff.

And as usual there’s the usual plethora of credited and uncredited “I-know-that-guy” actors to look out for if, like me, you find yourself constantly distracted by “actor spotting.” So lets take a look at some of the more interesting members of the cast...

Well, you know you’re in good hands when one of the first uncredited cast members to appear on screen is that “Crown Prince of the Serials” C. Montague Shaw, in a blink and you’ll miss it role which would guarantee he’d keep making those serials for a while longer. You probably best remember him as the King of the Clay People in the brilliant Universal serial Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars but he was mostly covered in heavy make-up for the length of that serial. You will certainly remember his face though, I’m sure, as the eminent Professor Huer opposite Buster Crabbe in another famous Universal serial Buck Rogers, that mostly recycled sets and costumes from that second Flash Gordon serial. Other of his more memorable serial performances would be his roles in Undersea Kingdom, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Zorro’s Fighting Legion and Mysterious Doctor Satan.

John Carradine also makes an appearance as the secret agent assigned to penetrate the treacherous warmongers... it is he who gets murdered in the aforementioned diving bell. You might remember him from many Universal horror movies of the time including a memorable turn in The Mummy’s Ghost and a repeat role as Count Dracula in both House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. He’s always a pretty solid watch.

Next up there’s screen cad George Sanders as a French villain, part of the gang who kill Carradine and seek to spark off an international incident leading to war. I always have problems with George Sanders because I always find him so unlikeable... even when he’s playing a good guy like The Saint or The Falcon. Thankfully, for me, he doesn’t get too much screen time in this one.

There’s also E. E. Clive in a little uncredited role here, whom you may remember as the burgomaster in The Bride of Frankenstein but the real interesting find in this movie is...

Ricardo Cortez playing the villainous and quite ruthless leader of the gang who poses as part of a stage act under the name, Fabian the Great... which is a ventriloquist’s act. Now I’d seen this guy before and remembered him from his starring role as Sam Spade in the very first movie version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (before the role was forever made synonymous with Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the character in the third screen version of the novel). I also remember his acting in The Maltese Falcon was pretty much atrocious and, at least in this movie, he comes off a little better than he did in that 1931 movie. Maybe in the eight years in between he just honed his craft and got better (the guy got hired a lot by the looks of things), both before and after his turn as Sam Spade and he must have been one of those actors who found the time adapting to the constraints and demands of “the talkies” a difficult period of adjustment... although he was frequently in work so he must have been well liked.

In this movie he’s got an interesting slant to his performance because, as I said, his “cover” is that he’s a ventriloquist and even though it’s in no way essential to the plot, we do catch him talking to his dummy and becoming over-obsessed with his little wooden pal, as many ventriloquists apparently do. He’s no screen forerunner of Maxwell Frere in Dead of Night or Corky Withers in Magic, but he certainly seems to have acquired the constant habit of getting a little bit too enthusiastic about his “little helper” and this does get a little distracting and inappropriate for one of these fast-paced quickies, even though a part of the films denouement does indeed feature the dummy to a small extent. I guess Mr. Cortez was just exploring his craft and like any good actor, embellishing his performance with little observations about the way these kinds of people act when they’re not performing... good for him though. It at least makes for an interesting performance.

As usual with the Moto films, Peter Lorre’s performance is just brilliant and extremely fast paced, with some good judo throws and fist fights thrown in which help make his character a very different kettle of sushi from his Chinese equivalent Charlie Chan, who is payed homage to in this movie with a theatre showing a print of Charlie Chan in Honolulu starring Warner Oland. Now this is interesting because this film was actually shot and, although Warner Oland was slated to star in that movie, he died while Mr. Moto’s Last Warning was still being made (for more details on the death of Warner Oland, see my review of Mr. Moto’s Gamble here) and Sydney Toler replaced him in the movie, which was released in 1938. This must have caused some consternation to any eagle-eyed Charlie Chan fans who noticed this brief reference back in the day. It also caused consternation to my stupidly rigid sense of film-lore reality when my annoying brain wanted to know how Charlie Chan’s Number One son could be a character in the Moto universe, as depicted in Mr. Moto’s Gamble but then be a fictional character in a later Mr. Moto movie. That doesn’t make sense! But then again... if I can weather the absolutely mind-blowing cross-movie continuity conundrums of the Universal Mummy series then my poor head should be able to handle minor references like this one, I guess.

What more can I say about this movie... other than it has an uncredited but mostly unnoticeable score by David Raskin who made such a splash with his music for Laura. Another fast-paced entry in the Mr. Moto series. Always a good watch.

A Winter’s Tale

The Chinese Ring 1947 US

Directed by William Beaudine

Monogram DVD Region 1

Well this was an... experience, shall we say?

The Chinese Ring is the 42nd of the 47 initial Charlie Chan movies and was the first to star Roland Winters as Charlie. It’s also the first time I’ve seen him in the role and, although I was expecting to be disappointed by the performance after all those “beyond excellent” portrayals by Warner Oland and the “more than competent” performances by Sidney Toler... I wasn’t expecting to be quite this disappointed. Although some (but not all) of that disappointment might well be shouldered by the less than perfect script which has been absconded with by... oh, wait, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.

So... to smooth in the transition from Toler to Winters, Monogram have retained the services of Mantan Moreland “funny comic black stereotype” Birmingham Brown and “Number Two Son” Victor Sen Young (who has, for some bizarre reason, had his first name changed from Jimmy to that of number three son Tommy... WHAT?). However, they don’t get much to do on this show because... oh well... time to get to it then...

The Chinese Ring is a not very clever re-make (it even uses the same writer’s ever so slightly altered screenplay... and I mean “slightly”) of Mr. Wong in Chinatown from 8 years previous. My review of that little classic is right here. The thing is... this is really using the same script with just a few minor adjustments to get Moreland and Young in it... the original version’s equivalent characters of “bumbling police Captain” and “plucky but irritating female screwball comedy reporter” are still in place in this version and still doing all the things they did the first time around... so Moreland and Young really don’t have much to do in this one and their screen presence is kept to a minimum.

Winter’s Chan is somewhat less charming than the two previous actors. He is a consummate professional and you can see him “in character”, hanging on every word and deed of all the other characters in a scene... but the fact that you notice just how intently concentrated he is, when you know the real Chan would have had all that info sluicing into the back of his head while his real mental processes were hard at work trying to solve the crime, is enough to single this guy out as a “fake Chan”. At least in this one. Now it might not be his fault of course... this feels like a really hastily assembled rush-adaptation of the earlier script and as such, the different personality of Karloff’s Mr. Wong character may be what Winters is inadvertently channelling in this performance... I just don’t know. I’d have to see more of the Roland Winters Chan films and, as far as I know, this is the only one which is commercially available on DVD.

Added to this we have a script from one of the better Wong films which is not a shadow of its former self. Sloppily brought to the screen from a studio which is more than living up to its cheap-ass reputation on this one. There are some nice chiaroscuro effects with the lights and darks in some of the shots but mostly the camera work is uninteresting and pedestrian on this one and in no way saves or even helps the film. This is my least favourite Charlie Chan film so far... at least all the others I’ve seen had Oland or Toler in them to lighten the weight of some of the other performers. Winters might well have grown into the role for subsequent adventures and made it his own in some way but until I can get to see those... I’ll just have to reserve judgement on his competency to play Charlie Chan.

Move along folks, move along. Nothing to see here!

The Last Tolercoaster Ride

The Trap 1946 US

Directed by Howard Bretherton

Monogram DVD Region 1

And so we come to the last of the Charlie Chan films starring Sydney Toler in the role (although the Chan films would continue with Roland Winters). By this time Toler had been dying from intestinal cancer for a while and could barely walk some days and the last few films do kinda show a lack of energy from the title character. But the Chan films have always had a good supporting cast to share the action with... they’ve never really been completely Chancentric... even in the films when he was without the aid of number 1, 2 or 3 son. And by this time the Toler movies had not only one of his famous sons, Victor Sen Young back as Jimmy Chan, but also the regular presence of Mantan Moreland doing his regular Birmingham Brown routine. So the running around doing legwork scenes could be easily handled by two competent foils.

Even so, though, this is not exactly a great Chan film. It’s a bit slow and plodding and really just not as pacey as some of the others in the series. The cinematography isn’t bad though... but not as brilliant as it had been slightly earlier in the series. Most of the action takes place in sets of a house with a few small scenes on a highway and on a beach. There’s a really terrible beach set which looks really claustrophobic with a load of people grouped in it and which really draws attention to itself when it’s cut against some location shots of an actual beach. But this may have been written as having less locations due to the deteriorating state of the lead actor for all I know.

There are some great little character actors in this piece and... wait for it... Kirk Alyn turns up playing the usual policeman-who-needs-Charlies-help-with-the-case role. It was great to see him in this but, honestly, what a come down for the Man of Steel. When you think that this guy, just a few years earlier, had been the star of the two Superman serials! This guy is easily my favourite Superman (and a solid, no nonsense Clerk Kent for that matter)... why was he relegated to these kinds of roles? Oh well... at least they didn’t make him the “bumbling, comic relief” version of the policeman in this one... they save those kinds of scenes for Mantan Moreland... still he doesn’t exactly get a chance to shine either. Poor Kirk.

The acting in this one is a bit hit and miss. There are some irritating “screamers” in this house! But the saddest thing is when Charlie Chan goes off in hot pursuit of a suspect. How he caught him in his car is anybody’s guess because instead of walking to the vehicle in question, he slowly shuffles towards the vehicle aided by Jimmy and Birmingham and it really hits home that this guy can’t be playing Chan for much longer... he was dead within a year.

The revelation of the murderer actually was a revelation to me (I was hedging for Kirk Alyn’s policeman being behind the murders) but I barely recognised the character and her identity didn’t mean much to me. Just a quick pay-off to signal that the end of the movie is approaching, and with it the end of a second great era fr the Charlie Chan films. Warner Oland was always my favourite Chan but Toler also had a certain charm about him. Never seen a Roland Winters Chan movie but I have, "just one", on ice so I’ll uncork that dubious but hopeful pleasure in a week or two.

I really love the Charlie Chan movies but I’d have to say, if you’ve never seen a Charlie Chan movie before... don’t put this one anywhere near the top of your “to see” list.

Chantastic Voyage!

Dangerous Money 1946 US

Directed by Terry O’ Morse

Monogram DVD Region 1

This review kinda contains spoilers... not that you’d know it.

Gee pop!

Yes, the Chan is back... well he’s back for me at least, in this 1946 far-from-classic adventure. Hot on the heels of the blistering Dark Alibi, here’s a Chan tale that I thought would be a really good one. All the signs were great... for starters, it’s set on a cruising liner (woohoo... love thrillers where the detective has to solve the murders while on a touring, luxury cruise)! And then, during the opening credits I let out a startling and, apparently, scary whoop as Tristram (King of the Rocket Men) Coffin’s name came up on the credits.

My joy was short lived however... in this one there has been a change of assistants. We’re back to Victor Sen Yung as Number Two Son replacing Benson Fong’s Number Three Son for a stint, although Charlie does receive a helpful telegram from Number Three Son during the voyage. And Willie Best is back as the racial stereotype black comedy relief, taking over again from Mantan Moreland for one film only before they switch back to Mr. Moreland. Although referred to as an “assistant” in this one rather than a chauffer... he still retains his chauffers cap. Just to make sure you are not confused that it’s a different person than the last film, Best plays Chatanooga Brown... as opposed to Moreland’s Birmingham Brown. So... must be a family thing I guess... although why Charlie Chan would need a chauffer on a luxury cruise is anybody’s guess. As an aside though... turns out Chattanooga’s legs shake in close-up under duress just like Birmingham’s... odd that ‘-)

This film is a hundred times weaker than the previous movie. Dark Alibi had some pretty creative photography and a certain amount of innovation in the shots... on this one we’re back into standard Monogram potboiler mode and I’m afraid any pretensions to creativity have been firmly picked up by the scruff of the neck and tossed aimlessly out of the window. And it’s quite obvious when actors miss their cues or, in one case, where Sydney Toler as Chan keeps looking around to read his script off of cue cards, that Monogram were way too cheap a studio to bother with retakes.

This story of murder, blackmail and conspiracy to launder “hot money” on an ocean liner suffers terribly from... well, being terrible I guess. For starters, the guy doing the actual murders is really easy to spot. He spends the whole movie masquerading as a woman and not being allowed to say anything... presumably so the audience doesn’t cotton on to the fact that this “dame is a man”. Secondly... you know those films that have so many suspects that you don’t know which person has the strongest motivation for being the culprit of the crime, in this case the crime of money laundering... well you don’t have to worry about any clever writing on this one because the writers have gone for something very much resembling Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express when it comes to the final solution to the problem. Honestly, if you kept just the people who aren’t guilty of this crime on the boat and threw everyone else off... you’d have a luxury ocean liner transporting just three people around the world... and two of them would be crew members.

Oh... and it turns out that my whoop of joy at a Tristram Coffin was short lived. Within the first 5 minutes of the film he reveals himself to Chan as an undercover government agent... and you just know that means this character is in for an early demise. Sure enough... after another five minutes have played out he’s survived one attempt on his life only to have a knife thrown into his back a couple o’ minutes later. Poor Tristram... never the starring role he deserved.

If you are a fan of Earl Der Biggers oriental detective and you like the Charlie Chan films in general, then you are duly warned that Dangerous Money is one of the dullest and badly made in the series... even the usually witty Chantastic aphorisms are slight and badly written. Not a happy viewing.

A Channer Darkly

Dark Alibi 1946 US

Directed by Phil Karlson

Warner Brothers DVD Region 1

Finally, someone has released some more Chans on DVD! So I’m now catching up with the eighth Chan box set (eight if you include that lousy old UK Region 2 poorly transfered from TV screenings boxed set which was then superceded when the US started releasing the Chan’s right).

Dark Alibi is one of the later Monogram Chans starring Sydney Toler as Charlie. Now Sydney Toler was an excellent incarnation of Chan, no doubt about it... unfortunately he’s always compared unfavourably to Warner Oland, and yes there’s certainly no doubt in my mind that Warner Oland was the greatest Chan of all... but cut Sydney Toler some slack because he’s really pretty good in the role too!

This one co-stars Benson Fong as semi-regular character Tommy Chan aka Number Three Son (who you may also remember from his role 20 years later as one of the three evil scientist egghead villains from Our Man Flint) and Mantan Moreland as chauffer Birmingham Brown doing his usual scaredy cat role (NUTS4R@ readers who are regular horror genre enthusiasts may remember him playing almost the same role in King of the Zombies).

This movie starts off really well with some excellent chiaroscuro camera work. Silhouettes, shadows on walls, shots through bars... typical of the US film noir style which grew out of German Expressionism from two decades before (when is someone else going to figure that out... do I have to think of everything ;-). There is some really great, moody stuff in this opening robbery/murder scene but unfortunately the rest of the movie never again scales the visual heights so brilliantly introduced in this opening (which makes me wonder if the opening footage was lifted from another movie).

Still, it’s not a bad Chan movie. Not a patch on the Oland films of course, nor on the earlier Toler vehicles when the series was still at Fox! But it moves along at a pace... Benson Fong is pretty annoying however and Mantan Moreland, while always lovable, frays the nerves a bit on this one. Constantly talking to his legs to not run out on him there are numerous, repeated insert shots of his legs trembling which, it has to be said, really isn’t funny.

That being said, however, there are three nice scenes where Ben Carter, Mantan Moreland’s partner from his stand up comedy act runs some of their routines with him. While not as good as the routines they did together in the Chan movie The Scarlet Clue a year earlier, the scenes are still a welcome relief and one of them is chosen to conclude the picture by letting Charlie in on the routine himself. Sydney Toler would have been getting on a bit for now but he seems to do a pretty good job with his timing in this routine.

Other things of note in this entry in the series is a really intense scene where Charlie Chan appears to be shot at point blank range... I actually got nervous because there was no possible way out and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the movie with a recovering Chan in a hospital ward... however, the real villain of the piece has sabotaged the gun and the pseudo-henchman type villain only succeeds in killing himself with the booby trapped gun... which splits nicely into comical strips along the barrel.

Probably the worst thing about this movie, which is mostly set in a US prison, is its inability to leave you guessing on this one in the “whodunnit” stakes. The “surprise twist” villain at the end of this movie is almost a redundant scene because you pretty much guess the main culprit from that character’s first walk-on appearance early in the movie.

Still, all in all the majority of the Chan films are remarkably watchable and this one is no exception... even if Mantan Moreland was a little less on form than usual. Am looking forward to firing up the DVD player and putting the next one on soon.

Chantastic Tales!

Keeper of the Keys. 1932. Earl Derr Biggers.

Academy Chicago Publishers. ISBN: 9780897335959

Keeper of the Keys is the sixth and final of Earl Derr Biggers novels featuring his most cherished character.

It states, quite boldly on the cover, “a CHARLIE CHAN mystery”... but perhaps the biggest mystery of all about this particular novel is why, out of around 50 Charlie Chan movies made, none of them have ever been based on this last novel. I can’t fathom why not because after having read it, it’s a pretty good one and would have made a good contribution to the Warner Oland movies. Perhaps its time as a very short lived stage adaptation deterred Hollywood from having a go at this one? Although it’s formulaic qualities should have been enough to bring it under consideration I would have thought. Or perhaps the rights usage for the stage play added an unnecessary complication when the writing on the film series was obviously good enough to warrant that the adaptation of this final chapter was not worth bothering with.

Either way, the book is excellent in it’s own right and has some nice considerations for the general Charlie Chan fan. In this novel he swaps the heat and malaise of Honolulu for the snow covered pines of Lake Tahoe and much is made, all through the book, that this is Chan’s first sight of snow and his enjoyment and satisfaction of his own exposure to such an atmosphere is celebrated by this character at every opportunity. For example, this is the first time that the character has had the pleasure of finding the clue of footprints in the snow and much is made of this.

Like a good giallo, there is more than enough credible suspects in this novel for the reader to accurately guess (or frankly have any idea of) the identity of the murderer... at the denouement I was trying to remember which character had actually done it from the name given and I had to backtrack a little to remind me of that character’s place in the narrative.

As usual the book is peppered with optimistic Chanisms and I shall leave you with a direct quote from the great man himself from this novel...

“Three things the wise man does not do. He does not plow the sky. He does not paint pictures on the water. And he does not argue with a woman.”

Charlie Chan Carries On. 1930. Earl Derr Biggers.

Academy Chicago Publishers. ISBN: 9780897335942

And now finished the fifth novel in the series (I do hope nobody berates me for starting a sentence with the word “and”).

Charlie Chan Carries On makes up for the laziness and single location of the previous novel (see my post on The Black Camel) by having this set in a great many countries as the whodunnit is solved at various global locations because a series of murders is taking place in the wake of a world touring party of holiday makers. Like one of the earlier novels, Chan is not present throughout the whole affair... in fact the main character for the first two thirds of the novel is Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard from the earlier Chan story “Behind That Curtain”, although the events are set a great number of years later.

Charlie is given plenty of build up in the first few chapters though as he is discussed in complimentary tones by the Inspector and his boss. So when he makes his entrance later in the novel, he has already taken on the mantle of some kind of superman. When in his friend Chan’s office in Honolulu, just after Charlie appears proper, Inspector Duff is gunned down and seriously wounded by the killer. In his stead it is up to Charlie to join the next part of the cruise and solve the puzzle with which Duff has made no headway.

Although the writing perhaps lacks some of the earlier novels' wit and sparkle (by this time in his career I suspect Biggers was thinking more about movie rights' sales) it is still an enjoyable read and, as usual with these books, a real ensemble piece in regards to the characters.

The book was filmed three times. Twice in 1931 as Charlie Chan Carries On with the inimitable Warner Oland (a film which is unfortunately now lost to the world) and in a simultaneously shot Spanish version with Spanish actors, utilising the same sets and sharing some of the same stock footage (as was standard practice with some of those early talkies). The Spanish version is called Eran Treece and can be found as an extra on the Region 1 US DVD of Charlie Chan in Shanghai (in the first of the 20th Century Fox box sets). Warner Oland’s first successor, Sydney Toler, remade the novel as Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise in 1940 (also available on US Region 1 DVD in the fifth of Fox’s box sets.

I’m happy to report that although I have seen both surviving movie versions, the plot on this one is so convoluted that there was no way I was going to remember whodunnit! So my exposure to the films didn’t give away the ending of the novel this time around.