For the first ten minutes of the film it feels like director Phil Karlson is practicing for his two classic tough crime films a decade later, Kansas City Confidential and The Phenix City Story with its mysterious going-ons, dark shadows, a seeming femme fatale, a murder, a talking juke box, a lonesome coffee shop and more - but then after this very intriguing beginning it turns into a Charlie Chan film when the Honolulu cop is brought in. Not that that is a bad thing as this is a very decent Chan film.
Chan flies in at the request of a police friend who used to be on the beat with him years before. Thankfully, Charlie brings along Benson Fong and Mantan Moreland. Without those two it wouldn't feel like a Chan film. The two of them have nice chemistry together - two knuckleheads playing off against one another - Benson the eager beaver to get involved and Mantan doing all he can not to. The government is for some strange reason keeping stores of radium in a bank safety box! And foreign agents are after it. It begins years ago in Shanghai when a suspected thief escapes and only Charlie knows his face - but that was before it was burnt. Now this same person is suspected of being involved in the deaths of three people by a method called the Shanghai Cobra. And he could be anyone. This is the third or so film I have seen in which a juke box is connected to a location where the girls play the selection you have made and can talk to you. This was a real thing.
I liked the ending of this one. It turns out Charlie is responsible for a traffic ticket after yelling at Son # 3 and Birmingham - then realizes it was him - he laughs - so do the other two - till he gives them the dead eye look - then he turns away and they start laughing again - same look - they stop and then Charlie cracks into a smile as he leaves. The only character actor of note is George Chandler (pictured above) as the owner of the coffee shop - one of those everyman actors - you would never notice him in a line-up but he has 463 credits on IMDB - so somebody noticed him.
The Red Dragon (1945)
Charlie Chan is in the Atomic Age! By the time that this film was released in 1946 WWII was over and America was entering the Cold War. With the use of atomic bombs in WW2 nations were looking for the secrets on how to build an even more powerful version. This oddly takes us to Mexico City of all places. In the opening scene of stock footage of the city there are a number of movie posters reminding us that Mexico had a very solid film industry back then. Chan is called in from Washington DC when a man is mysteriously murdered who was involved in atomic research. His employer has discovered a 95th element. There are now 118 but those past the 94th cannot be found in nature and are man-made. This 95th element is so powerful that if used in a bomb it can blow up an entire city. And one man has the formula and has no security.
When his employee was killed there were a group of people nearby - all either trying to buy the formula or steal it. All suspects in murder! A number of other murders are to follow but no one knows how. One shot is heard, two bullets are fired and no one has a gun. The Chan films have used this gimmick a few times - once they were being fired by a cigarette case. This is even stranger. This is a pretty dull entry and director Phil Rosen who directed six of the Chan Monogram films plods along from room to room and meeting to meeting just killing time. Sort of like this review. Chan keeps gathering the suspects together to ask them a question and then says you may go.
Mantan Moreland who livens up these Monogram films is missing in this one and he is replaced by another one of the black comedians of the time - Willie Best as Chattanooga Brown. These black comedians were pretty much stuck in portraying terrible stereotypes at the time - lazy, stupid, scared of everything. Best said "I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the real bad parts... But what's an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out." Bob Hope called him one of the best comedians he worked with.
But while I have a soft spot for Mantan and his fast talking bug-eyed comedy, Best just takes it down to another level with his slow drawl. It drives me nuts. Of note here is that when Charlie and son go into a few night clubs, Best is not included and we know why. Mantan was a star for Monogram appearing in a number of films with Frankie Darrow. He is back in the next Chan film. He and Benson Fong are often the best part of these films as Sidney Toler looks more bored with each one. In this film though he does get to dance a rhumba with Barbara Jean Wong and uses a little kung fu at the end. And isn't doubled! The Red Dragon is unfortunately not some Chinese Secret Society run by a madman but invisible ink!
Charlie Chan in Dark Alibi (1946) – 6.0
An ok Chan film directed again by Phil Karlson with elements of his tough crime film style that was to come later in his career. I would have to guess that by this time Mantan Moreland was becoming a very popular item in these Monogram Chan films because they give him a big chunk of the film to do his comedy relief and he does great with it. Besides the usual scared so much my legs are shaking parts - that could be viewed as having racial overtones - he performs three of the "Incomplete Sentence" routines with his stage partner Ben Carter, who was also in The Scarlet Clue doing a similar routine. This time Charlie joins in the last of the routines. Mantan also gets about a ten-minute routine of being scared in a warehouse full of stuffed creatures. Toler, Moreland and Fong have a great chemistry going on that is always fun to watch. By this time Toler was sick with cancer and you can see that in his walk which looks frail at times. He was to be dead within a year.
The plot of this film is very similar to an earlier Chan film - Charlie Chan in London in which he also takes pity on a man sentenced to shortly be executed. A bank is robbed and a guard murdered. The fingerprints of an ex-con are found at the scene and he is convicted and sentenced to die in 11 days. Charlie happens to be in the office of the Public Defender's office when the daughter of the sentenced man pleads for his life. Charlie takes the case. Everyone tells him it can't be done. But he is Charlie Chan. Way more comedy than usual but with a little twist at the end. Also appearing is the creepy eyed Milton Parsons who has shown up in a few of these Chan films, John Eldridge as the Public Defender and Russell Hicks as the Warden. Three very familiar faces. This is Benson Fong's last appearance in the Chan films - Victor Sen Yung returns in the next one.
Shadows Over Chinatown (1946)
When Sidney Toler made this film he had about a year to live. Cancer was eating away at him but he still went on to make two more Chan films. I have grown quite fond of him as Charlie Chan and in these past couple of films he has shown a nice sense of humor and allowed his two assistants to get a lot of screen time. At one point in the film he says "I am living on borrowed time" and he was. Victor Sen Yung is back as his son after going into the military in real life as a Captain of Intelligence for the Air Force. Charlie must have been proud. When he was gone Benson Fong took over the role. And Mantan also returns with his usual corny hijinks that should be getting old by now but they still crack me up at times. His five minute routines in the curio shop and later the morgue is pure silliness.
For some odd reason the three of them are on a bus to San Francisco. Mantan as Birmingham Brown is his driver so who knows why except it kicks off the mystery. I know Monogram is on a tight budget but making Chan take a bus! I just watched Maisie Goes to Reno and in the last scene Perry White aka John Hamilton shows up as a judge and in the first scene here he is one of the bus passengers. I felt I was in the Twilight Zone. Most of the characters on the bus are up to no good and why any of them are on the bus makes no sense. The bus breaks down and they go into a little station where someone tries to shoot Charlie from a hidden location. No one even bothers to tell the cops.
On the bus is a little old lady who has come to look for her missing grand-daughter played by Tanis Chandler - another one of those incredibly attractive actresses who went nowhere. She does show up in Toler's last film, The Trap though. Everyone is looking for the daughter - either to love her or to kill her. A headless corpse seems to be in play as well. The film has nothing to do with Chinatown except the curio shop run by a Chinese man in Mandarin clothes. The title has a nice ring to it though. The mystery itself is of no particular interest - at this point it is really just the chemistry between Toler, Mantan and whoever is playing his son that make the films fun to watch.
Dangerous Money (1946) – 4.5
There is only one more Sidney Toler Charlie Chan film after this one. And this is as rickety as a leaking row boat. They basically take bits and pieces from other Chan films and throw them together. It is depressingly dull and unambitious. Not that the Chan films were ever accused of being ambitious but they would have a few good comedic bits and sometimes they would throw in some cutting edge technology or even a good mystery. Here there is none of that. It takes place on a passenger ship - tip, never get on a ship with Charlie Chan because someone is going to die - which has been the setting for a few of the films. Chan comes up with deductions that he grabs out of thin air as if he is a mind reader. And the comic relief of Victor Sen Yung and again replacing Mantan Moreland, Willie Best is dreary, tiresome and racist.
Charlie is going from Hawaii to Australia on a ship when a man asks him to come out on deck so that he can talk to him in a thick fog. Monogram was always generous with the fog machines in these Chan films. The man tells Chan that he is an undercover Treasury Agent after black money - ie stolen money - that is being laundered in the islands around Samoa. An attempt is made on their lives out there so Chan wisely says lets go watch the floor show. Come on Charlie. Even I knew he was going to be killed out in plain view. Everyone on the ship has something to hide - a few are killers using flying daggers, others are smugglers, some are under false identities, a transvestite, a couple of blackmailers - just a nice friendly cruise. No one even bothers to play shuffleboard. Even Chan's aphorisms fall short - this one was a lead balloon. "Old saying is that a man's mate should be at his elbow when he is in trouble". Huh. Really? No one ever told me that. One more Toler to go.
Charlie Chan in the Trap (1946) – 4/10
Sadly, this was to be Toler's last film. This was released on November 30th 1946 and he was to die shortly afterwards on February 12th from cancer at 72 years old. Toler had been sick for the past few films but continued to make the Chan films that he had fallen in love with. He was Charlie Chan 22 times - 11 films with Fox and the last 11 films with Monogram. Leaving aside all the racial aspects of a white man in Yellow-Face, Toler made a fine Charlie Chan. Always portraying him with dignity, courage and with a slightly mischievous side to him. He was always the smartest guy in the room. His relationship with whoever was playing his son - Victor Sen Yung or Benson Fong was great to watch. He enjoyed poking fun at them but clearly loved them. I will miss his films. They were never more than B films but more often than not they were a pleasant mix of mystery and laughs.
This last one is at best ok because there is no way that we could guess who the killer is and neither does Chan. He sets a trap and the killer falls into it. It could have been anyone and it would not have mattered. It does have a bevy of attractive B actresses all staying in a beach house on a break from a theatrical play. Fun and games don't last long as one of the girls is strangled to death and another goes missing. Unfortunately for the killer, one of the girls (Barbara Jean Wong) knows Jimmy Son #2 - perhaps from Red Dragon which she was in - and calls him and that brings Charlie into the case. He just sort of toddles about with Tommy and Birmingham getting into trouble. Mantan gets his five minutes as he usually does in a comic set-piece in the basement. The cop who is on hand through the film and was my number one suspect is played by Superman - Kirk Alyn - who played the super hero in a few serials in the late 1940s. The only one of the girls who went on to much of a career is Anne Nagel who plays the girl everyone hates. Too bad they could not bring all three of the sons for this one. Would have made for a fitting end. Next up is Roland Winters who was Charlie Chan in seven films.
