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.

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.

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.