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.

A Town Called Panic

Panic Symbols

A Town Called Panic 2009

Belgium/Luxembourg/France

Directed by Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar

Region 2 DVD

Don't Panic... only slight spoilers!

It’s not often one gets the chance these days to legitimately use the term “madcap” when describing a film... but that’s just what Aubier and Patar’s movie, A Town Called Panic, turned out to be... a reckless, impulsive and lively potpourri of inventive ideas inspired by their TV show of the same name.

The movie focusses on the adventures of a toy Cowboy (called Cowboy) and toy Indian (called Indian) who live with their friend Horse, in Horse’s house... until they accidentally destroy it due to an accidental over-ordering of 50 million bricks when they try to build Horse a barbecue for his birthday. The animation style employed is crude and ragged to depict our three heroes and their friends in the town/village but, since the inhabitants “panic” by nature just in the course of their everyday situations, the pace speeds along at a mile a minute and the movie hurtles along on its own collision course to a conclusion of some sort. The combination of speed and crudity very soon becomes addictive.

Everything holds together really well in terms of the actual “world” of the characters and this is quite strange because there are many things that contradict logic. Why, for example, are there sudden leaps in scale? Most of what the inhabitants of A Town Called Panic use in their everyday lives is scaled down to their size but when it comes to breakfast, the slice of bread and coffee cup are full-scale sized and dwarfs the characters. I especially liked the way one of the characters drank his cup of coffe by diving through and smashing a hole in one side of his mug and then immediately rushing back out through the other side. Little moments like this give the film some real lift.

The story continues to develop as Cowboy, Indian and Horse (who is cultivating a love interest with a sexy, piano teaching horse) build a new house... but it gets stolen in the night. The same thing happens the next night and so the three stake out their newly built house waiting to see who has been stealing the walls they’ve been building during the days. From then on the movie just gets even more surreal as our three brave heroes find themselves embroiled in strange adventures which involve undersea people (whose world is somehow linked with the duck pond in Steven the farmer’s garden, using it as a gateway/portal to their undersea kingdom), a long drop to the centre of the earth and a giant, snowball throwing, mechanical penguin powered by tough-guy, beat ‘em up, rock ‘em sock ‘em scientists who enslave our hereoes to make their tea and do their washing as they amuse themselves hurling giant snowballs at unsuspecting and undeserving victims (and it’s hilarious seeing Cowboy, Indian, Horse and their undersea acquaintance thrown around and beaten up by some old scientists).

There’s even a scene involving Horse and his “future girlfriend” dancing in a similar manner to a specific (and relatively obscure, given its famous source) dance sequence from Singin’ In The Rain. It’s this kind of warm, heart beating beneath the surface of the story that infuses the tiny plastic figures with a dose of emotion and identity that ultimately stops any of the jokes wearing thin in this one. It’s an absolute joy to watch and the noisy, “panic” stricken and, yes, madcap antics of the towns inhabitants will keep any kids and adult kids alike quiet... well there’d be little point in trying to make any kind of a fuss over all that loud hullababloo on the screen. Certainly I enjoyed this movie more than any Pixar creations of late and the tightrope of uneven sensibilities which live in harmony in this particular movie are a tribute to the talents who wrote and directed, not just this film, but the preceeding TV show of the same name (the existence of which I was completely oblivious to, when I saw this movie).

A very definite and wholehearted recommendation from me on this movie, as it's a darn sight more entertaining than the majority of other animated products on show at the time. Watch this one as soon as possible.