Charlie Chan, No. 42 - The Chinese Ring (1947)

It sure took those Monogram mofos long enough to decide upon a new Charlie Chan, following star Sidney Toler’s violation of contract by way of death. I mean, it took ‘em a full three-quarters of a year! They could’ve made three whole Charlie Chan movies in that time! The latest obvious Caucasian the Mono majors happened upon to portray their increasingly-anachronistic Asian detective was career-challenged actor Roland Winters. In Roland we have the youngest actor to ever play Chan, at the juvenile age of forty-four. Hell, he’s younger even than Keye Luke, who would make his delayed, triumphant return as Chan’s son in one of Winters’ later films.


Here we have, even on one film’s evidence, a rather underwhelming non-thespian, doing an impersonation of Sidney Toler’s impersonation of Warner Oland’s racist parody of the Chinese. It doesn’t help that Roland has the whitest face of any Chan, and his attempt at Chan’s traditional halting English comes across more as a French accent than anything else. Really, it’s like a bad version of Claude Rains in Casablanca.

The artistic failure of Roland’s performance, coupled with the already-impoverished creativity of the Mono-Chans, coupled with unrelated company troubles…well, all this coupled to make Roland’s six-film run the absolute final chapter in the 47-film Charlie Chan saga. It’s amazing. They found the lowest note possible to bow on out.


The only film I can find from Roland’s tenure is his first, The Chinese Ring. It is mostly of a piece with the recent Monogram bores; indeed, Roland’s presence is the only unique element, the rest of Chan’s regular cast as present as ever (those being, at this point, Mantan Moreland as chauffeur and Chanservant Birmingham Brown, and Victor Sen Yung as…as…). Here I have to break off the parenthetical to address Yung. He had been reprising his old Fox role as “No. 2 Son” Jimmy, only now he’s playing…“No. 2 Son” Tommy. Even though “Tommy” previously had been the “No. 3 Son,” and was played by Benson Fong. Name aside, this Tommy is really Jimmy. It was apparently just Monogram’s illogical effort to avoid continuity “confusion,” as relates back to the lead actor switch. Really, they should have done as before, and gone to a new “No. 5 Son” (“No. 4” having previously been used). This is indicative of Monogram’s overall regard to film quality.

What’s interesting about Roland Winters (it sure ain’t his performance) is how his skills necessitate a new kind of Chan. Simply put, this is a Chan where Chan himself is functional (or as much so as Monogram can muster), and not struggling to remain alive through the present take. So the focus is back on Chan, with a reduction of screen time for Mantan. Jimmy – er, sorry, Tommy – has essentially nothing to do whatsoever, and a concurrent drop in screen time.


Let’s plow through this, and put an end to Chan once and for all! A Chinese princess of all things, Mei Ling, pays Charlie Chan a visit at his new home in San Francisco (his 14-strong brood in Honolulu apparently long ago abandoned to the elements). She says as few lines as Monogram was willing to pay for, then just drops dead. Of what, I’m at a loss to say, because things just happen now. But she’s helpfully sketched out the designated one-per-entry clue: “CAPT K.” What is that, a 1980s corporate superhero mascot for Konami?

It turns out the murdered Princess (this movie killed a princess) was (in)conveniently friends with two Captains K: Captain Kong (something else which reminds me of the 8-bit era) and Captain Kelso (um…“That '70s Show” now). I’d’ve just scrawled out the man’s name instead, in this scenario, and eschewed the life-wasting “Captain” thing entirely.


Chan’s so-called investigation leads him to a meeting with the barrel-lugging Kong (I’m serious – the man oversees a freighter full of barrels). It’s not until halfway through that Chan the genius is able to parse out Kelso’s existence…long after the audience has figured it out. Yeah, Chan’s pretty inconsequential in this thing. And (spoiler), the Captains K are indeed ko-konspirators. The obvious villains are the villains! So much for trick endings (even in the light of a “trick ending” with a third nogoodnik).

The Kaptain K konnection yet to kome, Chan idles away screen time at the Princess’ seedy Chinatown apartment – Just what sort of a princess was this?! He Chan-chats the landlady about the Princess’ movements – her whereabouts, that is. This leads to scenes I don’t intend to recap which reveal the “motive” today koncerns bank fraud. After Dangerous Money’s thrilling currency fraud motivations, no less!


Time having passed, and Kelso having been Chan-chatted, Chan returns to the apartment (limited sets), for a lengthy kreeping scene. This klimaxes with the unkovery of a korpse – the landlady. This was all to be expected. Then Chan heads to the rooftop, as the filmmakers toss another death our way – the brutal, violent death of a mute eight-year-old. Fun times! (All the victims in this movie have been Chinese, which somehow excuses the filmmakers from child murder, at least in 1940s terms.)


Charlie Chan just flat out isn’t going to solve the mystery this time, as he is apparently plagued with as much ennui regarding his own franchise as I am. The Kaptains konsent, though, by setting up a devious ambush for Chan. They call him on the phone and request a meeting, then take him hostage with a pistol. The Chan of even a few years ago would’ve easily sniffed out this ploy, but Roland’s ineffectual yellowface routine cannot. Either that, or he’s thoroughly genre aware, trusting he’ll come out okay regardless.

The Kaptains bind Chan, with intent of drowning, as he is hauled out to Kong’s kargo kraft. The only reason, and I mean only reason Chan is eventually saved is because koincidentally the kops have followed his trail – for reasons having nothing to do with the “mystery,” mind you. Just because. (It’s In the Script, other websites would say.) And when the kops korner the Kaptains, they resolve the plot in a decidedly period way: punching. I imagine most of Monogram’s output is phenomenally punch-happy, in a way the Chans never were, and The Chinese Ring seems to be a part of that philosophy. You could make a drinking game of it. It’s not exactly “action,” even in the Monogram sense of the matter, but apparently the sort of cheap, repeatable thrill 1940s exploitation could be built on – Scene can’t end? Punch a character in the face! Hell, even the women get punched!

Kaptains kaptured, the movie now just has to go out on a joke. And since WWII is over, the world’s ethnics well subdued, Monogram happens upon the new post-war enemy all right-thinking Americans should rally against: women. I’m serious, I’m almost sad to miss out on the burgeoning sexism The Trap parlayed to such extremes. And so Chan’s final aphorism is a supposedly humorous comment meant to disparage an entire gender: “A woman not made for heavy thinking, but should decorate scene like delicate plum.” And I do love how the series manages to fade from my life in a moment that is simultaneously anti-woman and anti-Chinese (and possibly anti-black too).

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That’s the end for me, but Roland would do five more Chan movies before the series’ lengthy death spasms would take it to the grave. Unable to waste another week of my live viewing these terminal wrecks, I am limited to doing research…

Docks of New Orleans (1948) – Charlie Chan takes his particular brand of ineffectual sleuthing to New Orleans, where a businessman named Lafontanne (all businessmen in New Orleans are so named) seeks Chan’s help, fearing for his own life. What Lafontanne doesn’t know is that Chan is of no use until you are already dead. And with the poor man murdered, Chan uncovers a chemical-stealing gang which is improbably killing people through a peculiar combination of radio signals, glass beakers, and mass-broadcasts of opera arias. It sounds equal parts The Scarlet Clue and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Shanghai Chest (1948) – A San Francisco judge is stabbed to death via stabbing. The blade’s fingerprints belong to a man long-dead, executed at the judge’s Texas-like behest. More deaths proceed to occur surrounding the sentenced man’s trial – in alphabetical order. How’s that? Another anal retentive San Francisco serial killer Charlie Chan movie to inspire the real life Zodiac Killer, along with Charlie Chan at Treasure Island! In the end, it is the dead man’s twin who’s doing the killing, because we all know twins have the exact same fingerprints.

The Golden Eye (1948) – Charlie Chan battles a Russian crime head who intends to use a space-based satellite to stage an attack on London. Oh wait…

In actuality, it’s closer to Goldfinger…with a bit of A View to a Kill, which was just a Goldfinger rip-off anyway. Basically, gold-smuggling gold-smugglers are smuggling gold in a devious gold smuggling operation. The precise same plot convolutions as usual apply.

The Feathered Serpent (1948) – In the Chan equivalent of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung appear in the same film as Chan’s sons. Mantan Moreland is in there too. I can only assume about five minutes of screen time were reserved somewhere for Roland.

As for the plot, it – Whoa! Chan et al are involved in an archeological expedition through Mexico’s Predator-ridden jungles in search of Aztec treasure (and missing archeologists)! With all the awesome ancient curses and bamboo booby traps later co-opted wholesale by the Indiana Jones movies! Apparently, somewhere in all this they are able to squeeze in the standard murder investigation we don’t give two Chan shits about.

The Sky Dragon (1948) – The final Chan film sees Luke return, but not Yung. Things start promisingly, with all the crew and passengers on an airliner passing out from spiked coffee – save for Chan and his son. But what might’ve been Airplane!, only racist, instead turns into, well…Charlie Chan. That is, stultifying investigations on land, with things only becoming interesting again towards the end as Chan performs his usual climatic Chanquest – aboard another crippled airliner. ‘Cause you gotta replicate the initial murder conditions perfectly!

And that was it for the franchise, though it was not Monogram’s intention to end Chan’s run here. In 1949, Winters and Luke went to England, where Monogram had funds tied up, with the intent that the series would continue production in Europe. Franchise death came in the form of British currency devaluation – Monogram momentum now monetarily mummified. Chan took a pounding, so to speak. Artistically, the series had been a zombie for a great many years. It was a purely financial endeavor, and thus to die financially makes perfect sense.

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One could say Chan’s cinematic potential was gone due to television – this was surely the official statement lobbied about by Monogram at the time. Thus it makes sense that someone would foolishly decide to resuscitate the Chan character as a TV series (totally unconnected to the preceding films). Enter yet another undignified white man, J. Carrol Naish, to play Chan in 1956’s poorly-rated “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.” Even while the medium may have been the place for Chan, the times surely weren’t. There was just nothing pertinent or contemporary that could be done then. History had passed Charlie Chan by.


Chan still makes the occasional pop cultural reappearance, each attempt a predestined failure. Take for instance his next filmed flop, Hanna-Barbera’s 1972 animated series, “The Amazing Charlie Chan and the Chan Clan.” For the first time ever, an American “Chan” production used a Chinese actor to portray the Chan man – Keye Luke himself. But the focus was no longer on the obese Oriental, but on Chan’s ten children (and their dog Chu Chu), who traveled the world solving mysteries – while also playing in a rock band. It was just like every other Hanna-Barbera cartoon ever produced, with special note being made of “Scooby Doo.” I mean, “Scooby” scrupulously employed the constricting formula pioneered by the cinematic Chan. And Hanna-Barbera, ever the prolific producer of animated atrocities, could only eke sixteen episodes out of this premise. They oughtn’t to have tried.

Then in 1980, Jerry Shylock (who?) proposed a multi-million dollar comedy to star Chan, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Lady. The times now weren’t merely apathetic towards Chan, but outright hostile. Rabble-rousers C.A.N. (Coalition of Asians to Nix) opposed the production for its obvious racist issues (not to mention Peter Ustinov, yet another cracker, was to play Chan long, long, long after this stupid yellowface routine ought to have bit the dust). No matter, the re-titled Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen came out in 1981, and was an “abysmal failure.” Meaning it fits right in with the old series.

One year later say the equally unimpressive spoof, Charlie Chan is Missing (link not found). I’m not sure who in 1982 would have cared.

Nothing more has come of the property since then. Miramax obtained the film rights (for surely way too much money), with intent to create an edgy and radical Chan for the ‘90s. (Pardon my ridiculous guffawing.) Chan was to be “hip, slim, cerebral, sexy and…a martial-arts master.” In other words, nothing like he’s ever been before. Of course, knowing how studios pre-talk their properties, had this actually happened, it would’ve sucked.

Lucy Liu is presently struggling to force another Charlie Chan reboot out of the development hell it is rightly mired in. I honestly doubt remotely anything will come of this. I mean, why re-imagine the Chan character now, when the only thing anyone knows of him is the unfortunate implications? There’s just not enough positive name recognition for the sort of reboot treatment recently given to Sherlock Holmes…via Sherlock Holmes.

Of course, none of what came after The Sky Dragon is in any way a part of the franchise our focus has been on. That series, which passed from Fox on to Monogram and saw a staggering 47 entries, had been dead and buried since 1948. Any necessary connections, via actor, writer, director or studio are irreparably severed now. And since Chan has his origin in literature, anything to come has its inspiration due to Earl Derr Biggers. Yes, the Charlie Chan franchise is irreparably done with, and even new Chan films (ha!) couldn’t undo that.

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I’m done with Chan for good! WHOOOOOOO!!!!!

Let the drunkenness begin! (I don’t care if it’s a Tuesday morning.)


Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)

Charlie Chan, No. 41 - The Trap (1946)

When the end came for former Chan man Warner “I’m Drunk” Oland, it gave me a certain perverse glee. Okay, fine, his performances as Charlie Chan remain beloved by the oddball online community that continues to worship these 75-year-old racist B-movies, but Oland himself was evidently a jerk. This is the guy who pioneered the cinematic form of Fu Manchu, let us not forget, and made a career out of a very specific form of anti-Chinese stereotyping. That his death resembled what Lindsey Lohan’s will someday merely solidifies this impression.

Sidney Toler’s final, pre-death Chans, however, carry the stench of tragedy about them. I’ll be honest, at the start of his Chan Toler tenure, Sid outdid Oland – for me. And he was a genuine actor before Charlie Chan, with real roles in real movies. It’s sad that a Caucasian actor in his late sixties could only find work because he had a vaguely Asianish face, and was fat. When Toler’s slow, steady descent into death became clear, we wasn’t even allowed a moment’s respite. No, not when a money-hungry Poverty Row studio could milk his existence and propped-up physical frame for a few more entries. It’s fortunate Monogram didn’t try to animate his dead corpse after the fact.

Here we are at The Trap, the end of the Toler era – it’s odd, how lead-driven franchises have “eras” in the James Bond sense, even while Sid’s personal output of 22 films equals the official EON Bond output. No matter, I bid you farewell, Sidney Toler. If only the last eleven films you did hadn’t been so astoundingly unenjoyable.


The Trap is racist, this we know, because A) it’s a Charlie Chan movie, B) it stars Mantan Moreland, and C) it’s from the 1940s. This is old hat now, but there’s more! The Trap is sexist too! Basically, The Trap posits that all females, or at least all young, attractive females, are skittish, prissy, incompetent and screechingly terrified of everything to the extent that they make Moreland’s negro stereotypes seem butch. It’s nice to see Sidney Toler bowed out with a touch of class.

The setup here – which is actually unique – sees roughly 8 or so showgirls wintering for a month at an isolated beachside mansion, where they shall be slowly picked off, one by one, by a sexually-crazed killer in the shadows. [Record screech.] Hold up! I thought this was a ‘40s murder mystery, not an ‘80s slasher flick! Indeed, even the final motive has the pungent reek of ‘80s exploitation, somehow. Even so, the proportions are all different here. Imagine it, a disposable slasher movie which focuses on the dialogue, the characters [sic], and the scenes in between the killings – while still being no better for it.


The setup takes a long time, not because this future stock plot is at all complex, but because they’re trying to buy screen time without Toler’s cancerous presence. Much of the movie makes feints towards being a genuine murder mystery (hah!), but all the soap opera nonsense between the showgirls (concerning jealousy, men, clothing, and a bunch of other stuff nobody cares about) is a simple red herring. To cut to the chase, the killer’s motive is such: To disgrace pornographer impresario extraordinaire “Maestro” Cole King (Howard Negley). Which, somehow, can only be done by the random, wanton murder of girls only nebulously connected to the man. It made more sense in the ‘80s, but at least then they had exploitative genre trappings to fall back on.

This thing really is a horror flick displaced by 35 years. Take for instance the first murder (some casual 12 minutes in – and these things are only 65 minutes long). Much like her inane sisters to come, underage ingénue Lois (all the characters – and their actresses – have names that sound like 1940s porn stars, if such a thing existed) holds no sense of self-preservation. Breaking out the shot clock, she simply stands and weeps uselessly for one minute as the gloved killer lurks ever nearer with a garrote. A garrote! I’m sorry, girl, but at least put up a fight! Yeesh!

The discovery of Lois’ body provokes quivering spasms of speaker-shattering screams from the remaining showgirl coterie. It is very, very, very irritating, meaning it is a trick The Trap will fall back on time and again. When Cole’s dogsbody Rick (Larry Blake) opines silk cord stranglings are an “old Chinese custom,” this provokes even louder shrieks from Cole’s harridans. “EEK! CHINESE!” Wow! Sexist and racist in one fell swoop. Charlie Chan movies, you make every hour feel like three, but I salute your efficiency when it comes to what truly matters.

The flock of brainless strippers – sorry, showgirls – putters around incomprehensibly like so many hens, as someone with a bit more sense (i.e., a man) proposes a solution. To call Charlie Chan, “the world’s greatest Chinese detective.” Cue showgirls: “AAH! CHINESE!” Okay, seriously movie, you can stop harping on that one note!


No, wait, the screaming continues, even into the next scene at Chan’s house – and the girls aren’t even here. They’re just that loud. “WE’LL ALL BE MURDERED! AAH!” And due to a series of farcical misunderstandings (read: the speech impediments of both black people and women), Birmingham Brown (Moreland) convinces Chan that his son Jimmy is dead. Quick, to the Chanmobile!...er, Birmingham’s coupe.

This confusion about Jimmy shall not last, as Victor Sen Yung’s quick arrival resolves it. Sadly, he does so by creeping about the exterior of the Malibu murder mansion. The harlots all see him. “CHINESE! WE’LL DIE!” Give – it – a – rest – already!


Charlie Chan languorously forces his decaying mortal husk up towards the murder room – “NO, NO, DON’T GO UP THERE! AAH!” Girls, please! Enough already! Seriously! Anyway, poor Chan is relegated to mostly being still and reciting lines. It’s no longer acting, but simply recitation. For Toler’s cancer was so far so far, all Monogram could hope for was that one take in fifteen in which Toler’s words were comprehensible – if even then. And when they’re not…well, that just sounds more “Chinese,” which works for ‘em too! “AAH! CHINESE!” Okay, girls, knock it off, or I won’t continue this review!

…

Okay…Okay, are we all settled down here?...Yes?...Good. I’ll get back to business.

…

Jimmy and Birmingham go on one of their usual bungling side investigations, to no effect. These are taking up more screen time than usual (that is, more uneventful creeping, lurking and shuffling), though they’re losing whatever spark they once had. All I can do is remark upon the latest thing that terrifies Birmingham, a negro – himself. Yes, he sees himself and screams. (Ugh, screaming!) “Aah, I’m corporeal!” it seems to suggest. [Sigh.]

Things calm down again briefly, as Chan takes statements from the coherent (male) suspects, all while he perches on the edge of a bed and visible struggles to control his failing heart rate. Poor Toler. His death almost happens ahead of schedule, then, as the girls’ O.S. screaming startles the living hell out of him. Oh, what is it this time? Mice in the wall! Not even anything to do with the “mystery,” simply mice. (Spoiler: It’s the caretaker cleaning up the old Prohibition chambers. Also mice.)


This portrayal of women must’ve been trying, even for ‘40s audiences, so next they throw us a bone (and a corpse), as footage that must’ve been the 1940 equivalent of Piranha 3D displays both buxom bathing beauties and mangled death. In a very ill-staged moment, one hussy runs after an errant beach ball (at a perfect 90 degree difference to its own trajectory) and thus “trips” over a poorly hidden seaweed carcass. It’s Marcia, whose strangulation wounds and nearby cord lead everyone to believe she committed suicide…by drowning. (The logic, is she not working for you too well?) Chan himself cannot mumble out an opposition, until Crime Lab™ can step in and explain otherwise.

Resolving a dangling “plot thread,” this proves Marcia wasn’t in the cabana – yes, this was an issue. And at the film’s repeated insistence, both “Marcia” and “cabana” are given very peculiar pronunciations – three syllables and a tilde, respectively.

Oh, and when Crime Lab™ does determine Marcia was strangled, Chan declares it was the sort of knot “only woman can tie.” That’s the extent of The Trap’s sexism: women have different powers! (Though Chan does imply, to the fullest extent possible under Hays, that homosexuals can also tie such a knot. Boy, these movies sure are tasteful.)


Having gotten everything he could from the men, Chan turns to the fairer and frightier sex. “OH NO! DON’T QUESTION ME, CHARLIE CHAN!”…Shut…up! So Chan questions one, somewhat more capable wench, who obtained womanly garroting skills when living out in Darkest Orient, and [discussion in regards to red herrings deleted].

Back to Birmingham (racism will be a nice break from sexism): He sleeps outside on top of the basement door. What sense does this make?! And when the door predictably opens, Birmingham comes to a bizarre conclusion: “Erfquakes! Erfquakes! What is you at?” Actually, do you think we could get back to the movie’s sexist content?


Charlie Chan is becoming increasingly more reliant on capturing murderers with traps (he actually hasn’t solved a mystery since 1938). This makes basically every movie a waiting game until the final 10 minutes. But here those minutes are! Things begin with a rehash of The Jimmy and Birmingham Show, as they run through their typical sub-Scooby routine yet again. Then they happen upon the shadowy killer in mid-choke, and chase the (admittedly stupid looking) killer away. Chan is suddenly here (editing masking Toler’s infirmities most unsuccessfully), claiming they have spoilt his latest trap…which was to…allow another murder to happen, apparently. (Chan’s actual dialogue: “Creeping around, ancient Chinese tradition.”)

No matter, it’s time for action, Monogram style! That is, through stock footage. Cranked-up police film of cars on PCH, combined with night filter and the same climactic music they play in every movie…well, all that combines to make a car chase. Then the killer’s car crashes. It turns out the dying killer is…Okay, I haven’t run through the characters here, and I’ve already explained the motive above. Let’s just say it’s Pamela Voorhees or someone, okay? She dies, and everyone laughs genially. The End. (Oh yes, the killer’s female…That’s kinda rare for these films.)

And as that ill-motivated archetype perishes, so too does, in a sense, Sidney Toler. This is the last we shall see of him, a far lesser man than when he began…

But it still isn’t the end of the Charlie Chan franchise! Oh Lordie no! For if they could already weather one actor’s death, why not another? Recasting is already on the table, meaning these Chan films shall continue on ad infinitum until some outside force (unpopularity, television, Monogram’s transformation into Allied Artists) forces it to stop. But while 1947 would see Monogram actually start to shed its B-model model and jettison most of its many, many B franchises, there was still a little more life left in Chan somehow. Enough for one more actor to essay the role, and six more films.


Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)

Charlie Chan, No. 40 - Dangerous Money (1946)

In my temporary Chan outage, I have amazingly only skipped over one entry due to immediate unavailability – Number 39, 1946’s Shadows over Chinatown. A little research reveals what I’ve missed out on – torsos! That’s the lovely, Black Dahlia-inspired poetry Monogram would have offered me – armless, legless, headless torsos.

There is another surprise I missed out on, but that surprise is present in today’s Dangerous Money, so I’ll save it for now. I’ll just say this: with a robust 347 votes on the IMDb, Shadows over Chinatown enjoys a surprisingly high score – for a Monogram Chan, at least. It’s not great overall, oh no!


Now, Dangerous Money? Isn’t that a highly questionable financial program on CNBC? No, it’s Sidney Toler’s tenth film as Charlie Chan under Monogram, and his twenty-first overall. He’ll only do one more after this.

And, nearing the absolute end of my Charlie Chan odyssey, there is absolutely nothing new in Dangerous Money I have not seen before, even when limited to the Monogram era. Okay, it is the only Mono-Chan to take place on a cruise ship…which means it’s still the 10th or so Chan overall to use this setting. Considering the traditional Monogram drop in quality, this doesn’t augur well. In fact, again I think they’ve managed to churn out the most generic Chan possible, plot-wise. It’s a mystery, but without clues or logic or a reason one scene follows another, with way too many suspects and a tad of Monogram craziness thrown in at the end. For what it’s worth, the story concerns something like currency smuggling and the U.S. Treasury, for what difference it makes – none, though it does influence the title. And the latter third of the movie takes place in a cabana.

Okay, I’ll let out the movie’s big surprise: Victor Sen Yung is back! He made his Chan debut at the same time Sidney Toler, as “No. 2 Son” Jimmy Chan in Fox’s Charlie Chan in Honolulu. Yung’s performances were always superior to his follow-up Tommy, played by Benson Fong (of course, no one holds a candle to Keye Luke). But Benson was gone now, taking a break to start an L.A.-based restaurant chain, Ah Fong’s. And with cancer slowly eating away at Toler (though he does locomote himself in this entry), Monogram needed a far sprightlier actor to carry his sagging body and career. It is something of a relief to see Yung back.

On the other hand, Mantan Moreland is sitting this one out as well, meaning he is (temporarily) replaced again by Chan’s secondary stereotypical black chauffeur, Chattanooga Brown (Willie Best, of The Red Dragon).

Now, this is all that is interesting about Dangerous Money. Everything else on display has happened about 39 times throughout the franchise, and the cast is mostly mediocre at best. The one exception to that is starlet Gloria Warren as Rona Simmonds – in one of her only roles ever (a common fate for actors in Chan features). I’m not saying her performance is good, not particularly; however, Gloria Warren is damnably attractive, in a Julia Adams sorta way. You know, the actress who essentially popularized the bikini? Grasping at straws (and starlets), that’s what I’m doin’!

With nothing else to relate, and the plot not worth a church mouse’s fart, I’ll simply run through the physical events on screen, to see whatever that reveals. Anything remotely exciting will be italicized. I’ll be honest: I sorta stopped paying attention to the dialogue shortly into this beast.


A couple walks down a ship’s deck. Then a man walks down, in a way better described as creeping. Then Charlie Chan does likewise, with a particular, cancer-ridden gait. He stands next to a different man motionlessly for several minutes. Then they both avoid a tumbling winch that destroys a railing. Then it’s back to standing around.

Chan and the man go inside, where a magician alternates between standing motionlessly and throwing prop knives at his buxom assistant. Jimmy and Chattanooga walk outside on the deck. Inside, the entire cast either stands or sits, all still. Then a knife strikes the man’s back and he dies. Everybody now opts to stand still around the vicinity of the man for about five minutes, minor shuffling back and forth. Affording camera changes, one man is still seated.


Chan and another man walk out to the deck for a bit, then walk back in. Everybody stands in the same place for a while longer. Then everybody walks out except for Chan and the man. Fade out…Fade in, Chan and the man standing precisely where they were before, but now in a different room. They stay there for a while.


Jimmy and Chattanooga alternately walk and sit in their cabin, Chattanooga’s face covered in hideously fake polka dots – it is either a stupid idea of his own, or bad Monogram makeup. A man walks in, bends over to put his face near Chattanooga’s, Jimmy gives him a glass, and the man drops it. He walks out, and Jimmy sits beside Chattanooga, who has not moved.

Chan is in his cabin, standing beside a man and a woman. Several minutes of this occurs.

Chan walks into Jimmy’s cabin, where he and Chattanooga remain as they were. (As a side note as to content, this dippy duo has given themselves code names, “Chop Suey” for the Asian one, and “Pork Chop” for the black one. No, it’s not racist, why do you ask?)

Chattanooga somehow falls through the floorboards into the kitchen, where he stands up beside another black man for a while. They move around a lot more than all the other actors.

Every character is on the deck, it is daylight, and every character is sitting.

Chan sits in a chair in his cabin, nearby on their feet are Jimmy and Chattanooga. In a cutaway, Chattanooga’s legs shake most vigorously. They walk out, confusing edits happen, the lights turn out, a knife hurls into a Charlie Chan dummy, the lights come back on, and Chan walks out of a corner to dismantle his dummy as his assistants return.

Chan stands in a hallway with a man.


All the characters dance slowly. (Even Chan dances, with the same relative speed as a slow motion “Baywatch” beach run – and this isn’t under-cranked.) The dancing goes on for several minutes, to the point where I actually grow concerned this image will get burned into my TV screen.

Three humans stand together on the deck.

Chan stands in the same hallway with the same man.

Classic Monogram creeping scene. That is, all the characters alternately walk through every ship set available, edited to convince me they are all following each other. It is very confusing. (Then some noises happen off screen, and dialogue I listened to indicates a man jumped overboard. I would have liked to have seen that.)

A stock footage ship pulls into an island. Yes, this earns italicization.

Chan stands in the same hallway with the same man. I am now just copying and pasting.


Chattanooga walks into a new set, the crew’s cabin, in a walk I’d imagine the official script referred to as a “creep” – to distinguish it from other ‘40s walks such as the “lurk” and the “stalk” and the “goose step.” The other black man sleeps as Chattanooga examines the bunk below him. The man wakes up as Chattanooga hides under the sheets. No points for guessing any scene involving black people and bed sheets in the 1940s ends with a ghost joke.

The ship’s stock footage plays again.


All the humans are seated around tables in our new set, the cabana. (I’ll admit it – the sets from here on out are on their own interesting, even when I realize the “jungle” is no more expansive than my apartment.) A woman walks across the room, showing a couple to a table. At another table, Charlie Chan is with the man. Then a different woman goes to the bar, sits there for a while, stands up, walks out, then three men walk out, then Chan and the man walk out. Think this is boring to read? That’s what it was like watching this thing!


In the jungle, one woman stands beside one man. Then the woman leaves as Chan and his man arrive to see the man. Chan and the two men go inside a cabana which is not the big cabana we saw but a different cabana. The irregular man sits down, as Chan and the normal man remain standing. Nobody moves noticeably for a great many minutes. Then a knife kills the irregular man. The other two walk outside very casually.


A man and a woman and Charlie Chan stand still in a new location.

An extraordinarily skinny Polynesian extra dances for 3 seconds. A woman sits Chan at a table, here in the big cabana, where other people are also engaged in the activity of being motionless and seated calmly.

Jimmy and Chattanooga, whose mere presence now indicates something interesting, either creep or lurk through a dark third cabana. Immobile stuffed animals frighten Chattanooga because he is ethnic.

Cabana. A man sits next to Chan. Another man enters the building, sits at the bar, remains present, then a woman stands up beside him, walks around for a bit, sits down, and Chan stands up and walks outside. Trust me, the dialogue here isn’t worth noting.

Three separate humans do the Monogram creep through the jungle. A knife kills one of them. The other two humans reach the first former human’s position, a perfect place for standing.

Half of the cast walks inside the third cabana. A turtle walks more speedily than most of the actors with a flashlight perched on its shell. (That moment is never explained – I do not understand it.) All these people hide behind various props. Chattanooga sneezes. The other half of the cast enters, guns fire for 1 second, everyone resumes standing in carefully arranged positions. Then Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for all I can tell, enter with a single pistol, and the whole cast of twelve surrenders. Something unclear happens, the Rosenbergs go outside, Chan shuffles listlessly after them, sits on the floor near a doorway, Ethel misses his motionless corpulent body repeatedly with a knife-shooting gun, then Chan walks up to her as slowly as a segway and they are defeated by Charlie Chan’s mere proximity. It turns out Ethel Rosenberg is a cross-dresser! Everybody walks away.

Distributed by Monogram Pictures!

Really, do I have to add anything more to that?! At least it’s more exciting than Twilight.


Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)

Charlie Chan, No. 38 - Dark Alibi (1938)

Okay, so here’s the story. Some almighty demigod, in its infinite magnanimity, saw from aloft how enraged, sorrowful and quivering I’d become in the prolonged exposure to Monogram’s quality-challenged Charlie Chan pictures. To alleviate my pain, this noble superhuman has dried up my regular resource for Chans, which otherwise guaranteed I’d have to suffer through every one of the 10 remaining Charlie Chan movies – variation or no. With the Internet of all places no longer providing (and don’t think I’m about to search its bowels for the rest of this filth), and Netflix wisely eschewing the majority of Chan (due to reasons of low quality, racism, lack of interest, unavailability, etc.), I had only one option left…

I bought some entries!

I know, I’m still trying to come to terms with what I’ve done. I think I’m a masochistic idiot, as I now own four of the worst Charlie Chan pictures (not a series known for its opulence). Oh well, there’s, you know, like, academic reasons to watch these damn things, right? You know, for the blog?...Sigh. So be it.


Despite all the demigod’s efforts, we’re back where we should be anyway (for now), the 38th Charlie Chan entry, Dark Alibi. Dropping the useless Phil Rosen as director, we now have (for one mere entry) Phil Karlson, who was actually able to extricate himself from the Chan series and have a long career that included the Matt Helm movies. I salute him, because usually this franchise is a devious black hole of talent.

We’re back in the Monogram bank vault set, in the midst of a very standard robbery, the robbers never identifiable. Then a security guard sneaks down – so he’s shot dead.


Let’s get the danged suspect roster out of the way. All are ensconced as lodgers at the Foss Hotel, of proprietor Mrs. Foss (Edna Holland). There is typist Miss Petri (Janet Shaw), socialite Miss Evans (Joyce Compton), braying, slang-happy salesman Danvers (Ray Walker, but none of the four Wikipedia cares about), and traditionally bland nonentity Johnson. Most important, by her plot function and credit listing, is June Harley (Teala Loring, of Double Indemnity – which more and more seems to resemble a sick rite of passage into Monogram).

Here’s her father too, Thomas Harley (Edward Earle), who is quickly arrested by police for the bank job/murder. It’s gonna stick too, seeing as he has a poor alibi (a “dark” alibi, as it were), and his fingerprints are helpfully all over the vault set. So he’s convicted and sentenced.


Well, that was a pretty short mystery! They didn’t even need to get Charlie Chan involved this time!

Oh wait, never mind. With an over-generous 9 day timeframe before Thomas’ execution, June requests Charlie Chan’s free assistance in clearing her father’s name. And poor Chan – er, poor Sidney Toler, really. Say what I will about that drunken Swedish maniac Warner Oland, but at least Fox could make him look graceful throughout his entries, failing health or no. Not for Toler. It was increasingly obvious he was in his final years, diagnosed with cancer, and could barely even walk. But Toler could not balk out of a Monogram contract over something as minor as mortality, oh no, even when it was his generosity which even saw Monogram producing more Chan movies! So, no more graceless jitterbugging for Sidney; he’s simply propped up in his spot for every shot, left to stand motionless. Considering how listlessly blocked most of these Mono-Chans are anyway, one barely notices.

Given Toler’s reduced physicality, the burden is borne more and more by his omnipresent assistants, Tommy Chan (Benson Fong) and Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland). I know I say this for every Monogram entry, but once again the proportions are mangled to favor leaden comic relief over Toler’s cancerous crime-solving. As if to compensate, Monogram’s scriptwriters embrace the series’ latent racism like a life raft in a storm.


Oh right, June has a lovebird too, as we now see. Yup, with Chan becoming unreliable, you gotta toss in as many formula elements as possible. This one is Hugh Kenzie (George Holmes, but none of the six Wikipedia cares about).

Questioning the usual suspects is yielding nothing, so Chan heads off to prison (for the first on-screen time ever) to interview Thomas. He suspects fingerprint forgery – naturally, Crime Lab™ is on the task to take up Chan’s slack on this one, at the plot’s convenience. But while Chan is accomplishing little, Tommy and Birmingham are here, with the prison as the latest setting to house their incompetencies.

First up, the demigod tosses me a bone, allowing Birmingham (Mantan) to recreate the best thing that’s happened so far in the Monogram series: his “interrupted sentence” routine with former standup partner Ben Carter. It’s no different than before, so the novelty is gone; still, it remains the one redeemable grace for Birmingham and the Mono-Chans both.

Mantan: “I saw old –”

Ben: “Is he still out there?”

Mantan: “I thought he was, but –”

Ben: “He got out?”

Birmingham is reasonably funny in this context. Sadly, he isn’t when repaired with Tommy. Together, this duo is tasked with neglecting brain cells, and growing terrified of the obvious, labored gag setups free-roaming prisoners are saddled with. Somehow, in their comic bungling, Tommy and Birmingham are successful at instigating a full-on prison riot. It could be amusing, or exciting, or something, but that’s beyond the studio’s Monograsp.


Back to plot: While Chan’s been eating up screen time with his tragic immobility, he’s had off-screen policemen piece together the mystery for him. See, a series of other bank robberies has previously occurred, all under the same M.O. In each case, a separate ex-con was arrested; Thomas himself happens to be an ex-con. And these men were all behind bars together in the film’s off-brand San Quentin, State Prison.


Back at the Foss Hotel, June screams…Well…that didn’t amount to much.

Following another “clue” (i.e. the producers’ next idea of where it would be “funny” to send Chan’s assistants), our series regulars head down to the Carey Theatrical Warehouse – the place Thomas claims he was locked during the robbery. Here they narrowly escape a murder attempt on Chan (that is, it’s the 35th minute), as a truck barely misses them. “Woman driver,” Tommy quips, proving there was a time when this lame gag was actually cutting edge.

As Chan is away not getting the story squared away, Tommy and Birmingham are let loose to randomly, purposelessly explore the warehouse. This is an old, tiresome joke. Every prop in the place has a face on it – therefore, ever prop in the place terrifies Birmingham (because he’s black, lives in the ‘40s, and is thus easily terrified). As if making up for the class of Ben Carter’s cameo, Monogram somehow has to make it up to the white racists in the audience with such awful material. Ain’t it just knee slapping?, how Birmingham is scared of A) a stuffed lynx, B) a wooden crocodile, C) a cigar store Indian (racist in and of itself), and D) a skeleton…Oh skeletons, is there any B-movie from this decade that is not graced by your bony charms?


Even Birmingham’s accent is getting worse, sounding more “Sambo” than ever. “Tommy,” for instance, is now rendered “Thohmmiiiieeeeieiiieehh!” Even when he’s not scared (which ain’t often).

Johnson is found there (he owns the place, exceedingly awkward exposition reveals), pretending to be deaf. Chan disproves this by dropping a coin on the floor, as Johnson dives for the cash. I imagine the script’s first draft gave Johnson a more Jewish name. WWII aside, I wouldn’t put it past these people.

Chan et al return to State Prison, to accomplish the same thing they failed to accomplish the first time – find a forger. Due to matters of screen time (it’s hell filling out 60 minutes you know), or many simply matters of good entertainment (ha!), Ben Carter is back, for a reprise of his routine. This is lazy, and the charm is again lost somewhat…Still, it’s the best thing about Dark Alibi.

Ben: “I heard –”

Mantan: “Not until Christmas.”

Ben: “I never thought he –”

Mantan: “No he didn’t.”

Then Ben leaves again, abandoning Birmingham to fashion something resembling comedy with Tommy. Do accomplish this, they play that same insane Mandarin hand game Jackie Chan made famous in Shanghai Noon.


Plot: Chan fingers the fingerprint forger’s forgeries. The culprit is prisoner Slade – the warden, functioning with Monogram levels of intellect, gets on the prison’s PA system to bring Slade in. Thus Slade somehow manages to get himself a rifle (inept guards), and engages a mass of Monogram’s thug extras in a reasonably violent shootout. (The namby-pamby Hays people paid B-movies less attention.) “Come and get me, coppers!” Slade actually yells – thank you, demigod, for that one – as the guards shoot him down with Tommy guns. Tommy, of course, never once touches his namesake weapon. These movies aren’t that clever.

So…our main witness is dead, for very stupid reasons. Good thing Crime Lab™ is here, having determined how Slade was forging the fingerprints anyway. And now it’s only a question of Chan finding out whom Slade’s contact was.


So it’s back to the warehouse! That same deadly truck (which meanwhile murdered Petrie, I nearly forgot) sits idle, the forgery equipment prominent inside. Convenient. Even more convenient, the killer suddenly appears to satisfy Monogram’s action quotient, having an unsuccessful shootout with an immobile, cancer-ridden Charlie Chan. Tommy and Birmingham, meanwhile, secure that truck, drive it crashing through the warehouse’s props just like in Disneyland’s “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” and – kill the killer. Who is Danvers. It’s crazy, this scene is! I do like it when these movies get desperate, illogical and nuts.

Thomas is exonerated, but Chan predictably announces that the case isn’t closed yet – There is always one final act of brain usin’, even while insane warehouse hit-and-runs have replaced parlor inquiries as our climaxes. So Chan accuses our final bad guy, without even presenting evidence or reasoning or anything…It’s Kenzie, June’s boyfriend! Well, fine, Monogram, you just want to “surprise” me with your culprits, and I guess sheer randomness is a pretty good way of doing that.

Then Ben Carter is there (again), allowing Charlie Chan himself to attempt the same old routine. His delivery lets one realize just how talented Mantan Moreland really was.

Well…it was just another Chan movie. Again due to reasons of extreme blog buffer, it’s actually been half a week since I saw a Charlie Chan – That pause is just what I needed to make this halfway watchable. Again, good job, demigod. I realize watching these things on a daily basis has been awful for my mental health, but…only three more to go! (Unless I somehow offend the gods, and the series’ tail end becomes available. I hope that doesn’t happen.)


Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)

Charlie Chan, No. 37 - The Jade Mask (1945)

Well, these Charlie Chan films aren’t getting any better, I can tell you that. They’re becoming more prolific, somehow, with The Jade Mask as the fourth Chan entry in 1945 alone – outdoing Fox’s former record of three Chans per year. This same dubious accomplishment shall be repeated twice again, in 1946 and 1948. (Somehow, 1947 manages a mere one entry – I don’t know how it was so lucky.)


Writing at length about this nonsense yet again will be a trying proposition. Before continuing, let’s just accept a few things about the Monogram Chans. The plots do not matter. The cinematography is unimaginative (the screen caps below represent the best, most interesting shots in the film). The directing flat. The actors uninspired and lethargic. There’s barely even enough variation from film to film to make an up-close examination of the minor elements fruitful. And the camera never moves.


For what it’s worth, here’s out plotline, summed up. Once a-fucking-gain, a scientist creating secret weapons for the U.S. government is murdered near his laboratory. In this case, he’s found a process to turn wood into metal, with which any nation on earth could rule the world! Oy! Eventually, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler, far gone from the goodwill I granted him in Charlie Chan in Honolulu) will come along, working for his Monogram-only employers, the Secret Service, and solve the crime. In doing so, three or four other people will die violently, all by the same “exotic” murder method. Comedy will be lobbied about, by one of Chan’s sons and one of his chauffeurs (not necessarily the same ones), and it will strangely manage to be the best thing about the film; it will be only slightly intolerable.


There will be suspects, between 6 and 12, though normally 9, this number not determined by script needs, but by the casting director’s insistence. It is a fool’s errand, thirty-seven movies in (the big gag number) to actually list the characters. Still, the actors deserve recognition, for they spent even more of their lives trapped in the Ninth Circle of Hell that is The Jade Mask than I did. So we have Frank Reicher, Hardie Albright, Janet Warren, Cyril Delevanti, Al Bridge, Ralph Lewis, Dorothy Granger, Edith Evanson, and many more. As with all the Mono-Chans, they’re interchangeable B-picture stalwarts with no name value, even in their day…except for Frank Reicher, who was in King Kong. He’s the first one to die.


There will be sets, and like the suspects, they will be technically new, but for all intents and purposes the same sets we saw last time. With Monogram, that specifically means a chemistry lab of some sort, which in this one is passed off as a “furnace” – that’s the level of variation I’m dealing with. It’s like I’ve watched the same lame movie every day for over a week now. More broadly, our setting now is – Are you sitting down for this? – The Jade Mask takes place at a house. Oh…now…I cannot take it, Charlie Chan, please – stop – thrilling – me – so.

Now, a few specifics aside, all that could count for every Chan since Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (and a 99.9% guarantee the remaining ten Chans as well). That leaves me now with really nothing more to say, except to isolate specific strange or interesting things from each entry, and focus on them. This shouldn’t take too long.


Mantan Moreland is back, of course, as Birmingham Brown, given nothing to do. Most of the time, he’s literally just standing in the corner of the frame, bugging out his eyeballs at irregular intervals. He is now the high point of the series.

Tommy Chan, “Number Three Son,” meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. For the one and only time, we’re saddled with the next step down on the great Chan de-evolutionary chain of ineffective sons – “Number Four Son” Eddie Chan. Our performer here is Eddie Luke, actual younger brother of the far-far-far-superior “Number One Son” Keye Luke. I miss Keye. Eddie is mostly yet another dispirited copy of a copy, as these things go, but he has some specific characteristics – He’s a bookworm, and…Well, that’s it. And this is the most notable thing about The Jade Mask, which sets it apart from the rest. This series has gotten really rather useless.


Yeah, the franchise is stagnant. In movie terms, 37 flicks in is well beyond the standard quittin’ time. As TV is concerned, though, that’s barely two seasons! And yet we don’t see most TV shows growing so stale and tired so early on – And it is a constant assertion of mine that the serial films of the ‘40s were really a precursor to serialized television. I cannot say what it is about a movie series, that tires it out much sooner – and these Chans average 62 minutes long, which ain’t that much longer than our hour-long shows today (ads ignored, naturally). Of course if I had to watch thirty-seven episodes of something like “Leave It to Beaver” (that is, something archaic), I might start to see less inspiration than today’s best programming. Who knows? I am not watching “Leave it to Beaver!”


Okay, so what are the other remotely interesting elements of The Jade Mask? Well, there’s a mask. I assume it’s jade, but that’s from the title alone; yes, these movie titles are more informative than their feature-length content. Actually, there’s a ton of masks, one for each suspect present – this ought to at least be interesting enough to warrant a screen cap, but it isn’t. That’s how bungled some of these ideas are. There are also marionettes, and ventriloquists’ puppets, and other little creepy things, which are equally neglected – compare it to the contemporary Dead of Night, a very disturbing horror flick (from Ealing, of all studios). Monogram sucks!

During the killer’s reveal, we learn he’s been wearing one of those remarkably convincing “Mission: Impossible” rubber masks the entire time. Like in that show (and film series), it even changes the killer’s build, body type, etc. It’s…stupid.

Oh yeah, there’s also a remarkable continuity error where a motorcycle policeman is murdered for no damn good reason (outdoors), and the killer wears his uniform to perform another killing. Later, the policeman’s body is discovered (indoors), his uniform back on. The killer overcompensated at some point.

Also, the butler is killed, then made to walk around the house like a marionette (described, but not seen). For this to be possible, the house’d need a series of mechanisms equivalent to a Disneyland ride! And all this to set up a single unconvincing red herring!


And…that…is…all I had to say about The Jade Mask, and I haven’t the spiritual strength to attempt an actual (unnecessary) plot summary in greater depth. Would you believe it, I cannot even out-write my own screen caps? So scroll down a tad more, and bask in the unidentifiable visual fabric of the Charlie Chan series as a whole…





And here, at the very end, is the best thing I’ve seen in quite some time!


And if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy some war bonds…


Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)