The Chinese Ring (1947) – 4/10
After Sidney Toler died in 1947 Monogram seemingly went out and picked the first person they bumped into, Roland Winters. The first white guy of course. Winters had been in a little Broadway but mainly had worked in radio, announcing baseball games for the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves. Somehow he got this gig and is pretty awful as Charlie Chan. There is no personality or charm or humor or even much detecting as the quality of the Chan films takes a further dive. These Winter films are not held in any esteem even by Charlie Chan fans. The debate is always who was better as Chan, Toler or Oland - Winter never even enters into the discussion. Not that the plots of the films are that much worse than what came before in the Monogram films - but it is impossible to warm up to Winters as we do with the previous two.
In this first Winter's outing, Chan does most of the detecting off-screen so that when he announces the killer we are all in the dark though it is not exactly a brain twizzler as to who it has to be. Along for this dull ride are regulars Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Young. There is also Philip Ahn (the ship captain) who had appeared in the 1938 Chan film Charlie Chan in Honolulu as his anxious son-in-law. Ahn would go on to a long career in TV, best known as Master Kan in Kung Fu. A Chinese Princess (Jean Wong) arrives at Chan's home looking anxious. Don't get used to her because two minutes later she is dead from a poison dart shot out of an air-gun. Soon her maid (Dimple Cooper from the Philippines) receives the same treatment. The Princess was in America buying fighter planes for her brother in the Civil War and someone knocked her off. Sgt. Davidson (Warren Douglas) is on the case with Charlie and a snoopy female reporter (Louise Curry) is sticking her nose in. Davidson tells her that this is no job for women and handcuffs her to a chair. Later she socks him. Charlies later says "Women are not made for heavy thinking but should always decorate scene like blossom of flower". Unfortunately, she does not sock him.
Director Beaudine was one of the top B film directors of that period and on IMDB he has 372 directorial credits! He was to direct three more Chan films.
Docks of New Orleans (1948) - 5.0
Roland Winters who took over the Chan character after Sidney Toler died was to make six Chan films before they finally put Charlie Chan to rest. Surprised no one has brought him back with a Chinese actor playing him. There was talk I think of having Chow Yun-fat do it, but it fell apart. Maybe even with a Chinese man, Chan is too toxic in the present day. These are from Monogram still and if anything they are getting cheaper by the film. The first one was The Chinese Ring which was fairly dull but this one is slightly better plot-wise but Winters as Chan is a catastrophe. I can't entirely blame him as he had never been in a film before getting this gig though he had done some theater. The how and why of that is a mystery that even Charlie Chan could not solve. But his slow cadence drives me nuts. I am a completist and want to get through the Winters's Chan films but have only been able to locate three of them and the video quality is very poor. Perhaps a blessing. This is the second one.
Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung are back but get much less time than they did in the final Toler films. They were often the best thing about those. They are barely around in this one but Mantan does meet his friend Mobile Jones (Haywood Jones) and they do a short version of the Incomplete Sentence routine. After Ben Carter passed away so young - he was in two Chan films - Mantan teamed up with Haywood in his vaudeville work. Someone is killing people with poison gas in a glass vial that explodes when a high pitched sound occurs. There are also three spies trying to get the formula for the gas. Not a particularly interesting cast and a very shoddy bunch of sets.
The Shanghai Chest (1948) - 5.0
How many times do I have to tell people. If you find a dead body don't hover over it and most definitely don't pick up the knife and hold it till the police show up. Which they always do. I wonder how many thousands of times scriptwriters have used this dusty contrivance. You would think they might be embarrassed but you get what you pay for and I expect Monogram didn't pay much. Roland Winters is back as Charlie Chan and is just as exciting. Like a bad pudding. He is so terrible. His cadence and accent are from some strange imaginary place in his mind. He needed to drink like Toler and Oland did before him. His face never changes expression giving no hint of humor or warmth. Sometimes that works like when a cop makes a joke about this being a Chinese Puzzle and look we have a Chinese detective and Winters gives him the evil eye.
Along with him thankfully are Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung up to their usual shenanigans - but Victor at 33 years old is starting to look a little old to still be the enthusiastic kid criminologist with no job. Get a job. The plot isn't too bad though it is fairly confusing and made little sense once you know who the killer is. A judge is murdered, then a D.A. is as well and finally a member of a jury that sentenced a man to death. In all three cases the same fingerprints are found. Of a dead man!!! Yes that dead man who was executed.
Mantan has a short conversation with Willie Best who is in the jail cell next to his. 'What did you do to be here", "Loitering", "There is no law against loitering", "In a bank there is", "No there isn't", "At midnight there is". Ok, not classic but two great black performers. Mantan also gets to go to a graveyard at night and then a mortuary at night. Roll those eyes. I think we may get more of Mantan and Number 2 son than Charlie and that is a good thing. Also, Milton Parsons as the undertaker. I wonder how often he played an undertaker in films. A lot. Of course the real mystery is why this is titled Shanghai Chest as there is no chest and nothing remotely related to Shanghai. Again, you get what you pay for.
The Golden Eye (1948) – 4.5
Well, it still has Victor Sen Young and Mantan Moreland livening up the proceedings but not too much else in this Chan outing. It is not really that badly written and Mantan has a few nice bits - in particular the ending when he moves for a camera close-up to break the fourth wall and address the audience as the bad guys were being held at gunpoint behind him - but the sets just look so cheap like they need to be dusted off. Much of it plays out in the dark as well which with the quality of the video did not help.
A friend of Chan comes to him after an attempt on his life is made in a Chinese curio shop in San Francisco on Chinese New Year’s Day. Charlie digs the bullet out of the wall and says it is from a German gun. "Many of these in country after recent unpleasantness with Mr. Hitler". Understatement if ever I heard it! Next thing we see is Mantan in cowboy get-up with chaps and spurs singing Home, Home on the Range because they are going to Arizona where this friend has a ranch. Tommy has a sleek Roy Rogers look going for him or as Mantan says "That's a mad look".
They stay at a nearby Guest Ranch with Charlie going undercover as a curio seller. When they get there Charlie tells Mantan to find his own accommodation and I think to myself that is sort of rude. Then I realize - oh ya Mantan is black and definitely not allowed - surprised that Chinese were. The mystery has to do with the mine of Charlie's friend suddenly producing large shipments of gold after years of being barren. A few dead bodies latter and a Sister with high heels (ala The Lady Vanishes) Mantan is declaring the case solved to the audience.
The Feathered Serpent (1948) - 4.5
Oh, the things that get me excited. Kind of sad. But after watching over forty Charlie Chan films through the Warner Oland era, then Sidney Toler and now Roland Winters - and various actors playing Chan's sons - the two best known sons - Number 1 and Number 2 - Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung appear together for the first time. Pretty exciting right? Right? Keye Luke appeared in eight of the films with Oland beginning in 1935 with Charlie Chan in Paris and ending with Oland's death in 1938. He was offered the chance to continue but said without Oland it would not feel right. So they went with Victor Sen Yung to step in and he was in thirteen with Toler and six with Roland Winters. Strangely, his name changed from Jimmy to Tommy in the Winter's films. In a peculiar coincidence Keye Luke and Winters were both born in 1904. The sons add a lot to these films - humor mainly but also a sense of family and affection that father and son have for one another. Without them the films would not be what they are. And here they are on vacation in Mexico with their father and of course Mantan Moreland who by now is like family. Son Number 3.
Of course, the vacation doesn't last for long as the four of them pick up an elderly American who is barely alive and take him into town. There they discover he was part of an expedition searching for an Aztec temple full of treasure. But before he can tell the rest of the party where it is he gets a knife in the back and is killed. At that point Mantan says "I need to go see someone outside". "Who?' Tommy asks. "Me". They all go in search of the temple and another missing man. One of them is a killer. Which the film actually reveals early on. In a curious bit a native named Diego tries to kill Charlie twice. He is played by Jay Silverheels of Lone Ranger fame - but later they discover that he is actually a white man in Indian disguise - so Silverheels plays a white man while a white man plays a Chinese man.
Decent enough but it is just great seeing the two sons together though they really needed to write a script that had more interplay between them. Maybe in the next and last Charlie Chan movie. Winters still doesn't have it - he is also cuttingly sarcastic to his sons and to Mantan but without the follow-up smile that both Oland and Toler had. Basically, a bit of a prick but the look on his face when he is in hiding waiting to hit one of the bad guys and Mantan comes out at gunpoint and greets him is priceless. The two sons do work together at the end to beat the hell out of two of the villains.
"Birmingham what do you think of these hieroglyphics" "Well the hieroglyphic is different than the loweroglyphic but what I think it says is No Trespassing. Let's get out of here"
The Sky Dragon (1949) - 6.0
Well, they say all good things have to come to an end. That goes for all so-so things as well. This is the final Charlie Chan film. From 1931 to 1949 through three different Charlie Chan's there were 43 Chan films of which four are lost. Meaning that I watched 39 of them over the last year or two. Just something I wanted to do for reasons I can't figure out. But when you start something you have to finish it. None of these films are great but most are decent comfort food and every now and then you come across one that is a good whodunit. You know that Chan and his not so able assistants will figure it out in the end. The films are interesting as period pieces. Chan travels the world solving murders, comes across new technology to the age, goes through WW2 into the Cold War. He deals with mediums, wax museums, hypnotists, psychos, Femme Fatales, spies, gangsters, knife throwers, Nazis and punks. One of three sons over the years played by Chinese actors are almost always with him. Many of the actors show up as different characters in various films, A few like Rita Hayworth went on to great careers.
Charlie Chan is sort of a mythical figure in our culture and has gone through various shifts in popularity as social morays have changed. For decades he was immensely popular but then he fell under a death sentence for his stereotype of a Chinese person - and for being played by a white man doing Yellow-Face. These films were no longer allowed on TV. Not sure if that has changed. Whether it is fair to judge films on merits like this decades later when society has changed so much is a question still being debated. The funny thing is that at the time Charlie Chan was enormously popular in China and they made their own Charlie Chan films which are sadly lost. Those would be wonderful to see. But people who condemn these films have to realize that within the context of their time, they were actually progressive. Chinese were almost always portrayed as Fu Manchu type figures or coolies or Dragon Women.
Chan on the other hand was always the smartest guy in the room with a good family and always showing courage. When Earl Derr Biggers wrote the series of Chan films in the 1920's, it was a period of virulently anti-immigration in particularly targeting the Chinese and yet Biggers choose a Chinese man living in Hawaii to be his hero. And he was enormously popular. In the films Chan is always respected by white society and in the few occasions someone makes a racist remark he smacks them down. It is a shame they never chanced having an Asian actor give it a go but those were the times. Blame society, not the movies. When the Mr. Wong films were ending they gave Keye Luke a chance to play the character with hopes of extending the series. Sadly, nobody went though it is a fine film and much closer to the character in the book than Karloff had been. There has been speculation from time to time of another Chan film completely updated and with a Chinese person playing the role but so far nothing has come of it. Even Chow Yun-fat was mentioned at one time. Perhaps the character is still too toxic to touch.
This final Chan film is a good one with my usual stipulation that Roland Winters is just not very good as Chan. In the film before this, Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung were together for the first time. Victor had been in all the Winters Chan films but not here in the last one. So we have Keye Luke and Mantan Moreland. Charlie and son are flying on a plane when everyone is drugged with the coffee and falls asleep. I don't drink coffee so I would have been awake and probably killed. Well not quite everyone as someone murders a passenger and steals $250,000. And then takes the drug in the coffee and sleeps.
Among the crew are Milburn Stone as the captain (Doc on Gunsmoke - I have run into him often as of late), Elena Verdugo (Marcus Welby's nurse for years) as a hostess and the great Noel Neill as a hostess. As soon as I heard that voice I recognized Lois Lane. Still my favorite Lois Lane. A couple more murders on the ground before Chan figures it out. Maybe it was time to retire. Mantan spends much of his time trying to romance a maid, the lovely Louise Franklin who was a dancer and nightclub performer. To no avail of course. So goodbye to Charlie Chan and Sons and Birmingham Brown. At least I know that in five years I won't remember any of these and I can start over.
After Sidney Toler died in 1947 Monogram seemingly went out and picked the first person they bumped into, Roland Winters. The first white guy of course. Winters had been in a little Broadway but mainly had worked in radio, announcing baseball games for the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves. Somehow he got this gig and is pretty awful as Charlie Chan. There is no personality or charm or humor or even much detecting as the quality of the Chan films takes a further dive. These Winter films are not held in any esteem even by Charlie Chan fans. The debate is always who was better as Chan, Toler or Oland - Winter never even enters into the discussion. Not that the plots of the films are that much worse than what came before in the Monogram films - but it is impossible to warm up to Winters as we do with the previous two.
In this first Winter's outing, Chan does most of the detecting off-screen so that when he announces the killer we are all in the dark though it is not exactly a brain twizzler as to who it has to be. Along for this dull ride are regulars Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Young. There is also Philip Ahn (the ship captain) who had appeared in the 1938 Chan film Charlie Chan in Honolulu as his anxious son-in-law. Ahn would go on to a long career in TV, best known as Master Kan in Kung Fu. A Chinese Princess (Jean Wong) arrives at Chan's home looking anxious. Don't get used to her because two minutes later she is dead from a poison dart shot out of an air-gun. Soon her maid (Dimple Cooper from the Philippines) receives the same treatment. The Princess was in America buying fighter planes for her brother in the Civil War and someone knocked her off. Sgt. Davidson (Warren Douglas) is on the case with Charlie and a snoopy female reporter (Louise Curry) is sticking her nose in. Davidson tells her that this is no job for women and handcuffs her to a chair. Later she socks him. Charlies later says "Women are not made for heavy thinking but should always decorate scene like blossom of flower". Unfortunately, she does not sock him.
Director Beaudine was one of the top B film directors of that period and on IMDB he has 372 directorial credits! He was to direct three more Chan films.
Docks of New Orleans (1948) - 5.0
Roland Winters who took over the Chan character after Sidney Toler died was to make six Chan films before they finally put Charlie Chan to rest. Surprised no one has brought him back with a Chinese actor playing him. There was talk I think of having Chow Yun-fat do it, but it fell apart. Maybe even with a Chinese man, Chan is too toxic in the present day. These are from Monogram still and if anything they are getting cheaper by the film. The first one was The Chinese Ring which was fairly dull but this one is slightly better plot-wise but Winters as Chan is a catastrophe. I can't entirely blame him as he had never been in a film before getting this gig though he had done some theater. The how and why of that is a mystery that even Charlie Chan could not solve. But his slow cadence drives me nuts. I am a completist and want to get through the Winters's Chan films but have only been able to locate three of them and the video quality is very poor. Perhaps a blessing. This is the second one.
Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung are back but get much less time than they did in the final Toler films. They were often the best thing about those. They are barely around in this one but Mantan does meet his friend Mobile Jones (Haywood Jones) and they do a short version of the Incomplete Sentence routine. After Ben Carter passed away so young - he was in two Chan films - Mantan teamed up with Haywood in his vaudeville work. Someone is killing people with poison gas in a glass vial that explodes when a high pitched sound occurs. There are also three spies trying to get the formula for the gas. Not a particularly interesting cast and a very shoddy bunch of sets.
The Shanghai Chest (1948) - 5.0
How many times do I have to tell people. If you find a dead body don't hover over it and most definitely don't pick up the knife and hold it till the police show up. Which they always do. I wonder how many thousands of times scriptwriters have used this dusty contrivance. You would think they might be embarrassed but you get what you pay for and I expect Monogram didn't pay much. Roland Winters is back as Charlie Chan and is just as exciting. Like a bad pudding. He is so terrible. His cadence and accent are from some strange imaginary place in his mind. He needed to drink like Toler and Oland did before him. His face never changes expression giving no hint of humor or warmth. Sometimes that works like when a cop makes a joke about this being a Chinese Puzzle and look we have a Chinese detective and Winters gives him the evil eye.
Along with him thankfully are Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung up to their usual shenanigans - but Victor at 33 years old is starting to look a little old to still be the enthusiastic kid criminologist with no job. Get a job. The plot isn't too bad though it is fairly confusing and made little sense once you know who the killer is. A judge is murdered, then a D.A. is as well and finally a member of a jury that sentenced a man to death. In all three cases the same fingerprints are found. Of a dead man!!! Yes that dead man who was executed.
Mantan has a short conversation with Willie Best who is in the jail cell next to his. 'What did you do to be here", "Loitering", "There is no law against loitering", "In a bank there is", "No there isn't", "At midnight there is". Ok, not classic but two great black performers. Mantan also gets to go to a graveyard at night and then a mortuary at night. Roll those eyes. I think we may get more of Mantan and Number 2 son than Charlie and that is a good thing. Also, Milton Parsons as the undertaker. I wonder how often he played an undertaker in films. A lot. Of course the real mystery is why this is titled Shanghai Chest as there is no chest and nothing remotely related to Shanghai. Again, you get what you pay for.
The Golden Eye (1948) – 4.5
Well, it still has Victor Sen Young and Mantan Moreland livening up the proceedings but not too much else in this Chan outing. It is not really that badly written and Mantan has a few nice bits - in particular the ending when he moves for a camera close-up to break the fourth wall and address the audience as the bad guys were being held at gunpoint behind him - but the sets just look so cheap like they need to be dusted off. Much of it plays out in the dark as well which with the quality of the video did not help.
A friend of Chan comes to him after an attempt on his life is made in a Chinese curio shop in San Francisco on Chinese New Year’s Day. Charlie digs the bullet out of the wall and says it is from a German gun. "Many of these in country after recent unpleasantness with Mr. Hitler". Understatement if ever I heard it! Next thing we see is Mantan in cowboy get-up with chaps and spurs singing Home, Home on the Range because they are going to Arizona where this friend has a ranch. Tommy has a sleek Roy Rogers look going for him or as Mantan says "That's a mad look".
They stay at a nearby Guest Ranch with Charlie going undercover as a curio seller. When they get there Charlie tells Mantan to find his own accommodation and I think to myself that is sort of rude. Then I realize - oh ya Mantan is black and definitely not allowed - surprised that Chinese were. The mystery has to do with the mine of Charlie's friend suddenly producing large shipments of gold after years of being barren. A few dead bodies latter and a Sister with high heels (ala The Lady Vanishes) Mantan is declaring the case solved to the audience.
The Feathered Serpent (1948) - 4.5
Oh, the things that get me excited. Kind of sad. But after watching over forty Charlie Chan films through the Warner Oland era, then Sidney Toler and now Roland Winters - and various actors playing Chan's sons - the two best known sons - Number 1 and Number 2 - Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung appear together for the first time. Pretty exciting right? Right? Keye Luke appeared in eight of the films with Oland beginning in 1935 with Charlie Chan in Paris and ending with Oland's death in 1938. He was offered the chance to continue but said without Oland it would not feel right. So they went with Victor Sen Yung to step in and he was in thirteen with Toler and six with Roland Winters. Strangely, his name changed from Jimmy to Tommy in the Winter's films. In a peculiar coincidence Keye Luke and Winters were both born in 1904. The sons add a lot to these films - humor mainly but also a sense of family and affection that father and son have for one another. Without them the films would not be what they are. And here they are on vacation in Mexico with their father and of course Mantan Moreland who by now is like family. Son Number 3.
Of course, the vacation doesn't last for long as the four of them pick up an elderly American who is barely alive and take him into town. There they discover he was part of an expedition searching for an Aztec temple full of treasure. But before he can tell the rest of the party where it is he gets a knife in the back and is killed. At that point Mantan says "I need to go see someone outside". "Who?' Tommy asks. "Me". They all go in search of the temple and another missing man. One of them is a killer. Which the film actually reveals early on. In a curious bit a native named Diego tries to kill Charlie twice. He is played by Jay Silverheels of Lone Ranger fame - but later they discover that he is actually a white man in Indian disguise - so Silverheels plays a white man while a white man plays a Chinese man.
Decent enough but it is just great seeing the two sons together though they really needed to write a script that had more interplay between them. Maybe in the next and last Charlie Chan movie. Winters still doesn't have it - he is also cuttingly sarcastic to his sons and to Mantan but without the follow-up smile that both Oland and Toler had. Basically, a bit of a prick but the look on his face when he is in hiding waiting to hit one of the bad guys and Mantan comes out at gunpoint and greets him is priceless. The two sons do work together at the end to beat the hell out of two of the villains.
"Birmingham what do you think of these hieroglyphics" "Well the hieroglyphic is different than the loweroglyphic but what I think it says is No Trespassing. Let's get out of here"
The Sky Dragon (1949) - 6.0
Well, they say all good things have to come to an end. That goes for all so-so things as well. This is the final Charlie Chan film. From 1931 to 1949 through three different Charlie Chan's there were 43 Chan films of which four are lost. Meaning that I watched 39 of them over the last year or two. Just something I wanted to do for reasons I can't figure out. But when you start something you have to finish it. None of these films are great but most are decent comfort food and every now and then you come across one that is a good whodunit. You know that Chan and his not so able assistants will figure it out in the end. The films are interesting as period pieces. Chan travels the world solving murders, comes across new technology to the age, goes through WW2 into the Cold War. He deals with mediums, wax museums, hypnotists, psychos, Femme Fatales, spies, gangsters, knife throwers, Nazis and punks. One of three sons over the years played by Chinese actors are almost always with him. Many of the actors show up as different characters in various films, A few like Rita Hayworth went on to great careers.
Charlie Chan is sort of a mythical figure in our culture and has gone through various shifts in popularity as social morays have changed. For decades he was immensely popular but then he fell under a death sentence for his stereotype of a Chinese person - and for being played by a white man doing Yellow-Face. These films were no longer allowed on TV. Not sure if that has changed. Whether it is fair to judge films on merits like this decades later when society has changed so much is a question still being debated. The funny thing is that at the time Charlie Chan was enormously popular in China and they made their own Charlie Chan films which are sadly lost. Those would be wonderful to see. But people who condemn these films have to realize that within the context of their time, they were actually progressive. Chinese were almost always portrayed as Fu Manchu type figures or coolies or Dragon Women.
Chan on the other hand was always the smartest guy in the room with a good family and always showing courage. When Earl Derr Biggers wrote the series of Chan films in the 1920's, it was a period of virulently anti-immigration in particularly targeting the Chinese and yet Biggers choose a Chinese man living in Hawaii to be his hero. And he was enormously popular. In the films Chan is always respected by white society and in the few occasions someone makes a racist remark he smacks them down. It is a shame they never chanced having an Asian actor give it a go but those were the times. Blame society, not the movies. When the Mr. Wong films were ending they gave Keye Luke a chance to play the character with hopes of extending the series. Sadly, nobody went though it is a fine film and much closer to the character in the book than Karloff had been. There has been speculation from time to time of another Chan film completely updated and with a Chinese person playing the role but so far nothing has come of it. Even Chow Yun-fat was mentioned at one time. Perhaps the character is still too toxic to touch.
This final Chan film is a good one with my usual stipulation that Roland Winters is just not very good as Chan. In the film before this, Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung were together for the first time. Victor had been in all the Winters Chan films but not here in the last one. So we have Keye Luke and Mantan Moreland. Charlie and son are flying on a plane when everyone is drugged with the coffee and falls asleep. I don't drink coffee so I would have been awake and probably killed. Well not quite everyone as someone murders a passenger and steals $250,000. And then takes the drug in the coffee and sleeps.
Among the crew are Milburn Stone as the captain (Doc on Gunsmoke - I have run into him often as of late), Elena Verdugo (Marcus Welby's nurse for years) as a hostess and the great Noel Neill as a hostess. As soon as I heard that voice I recognized Lois Lane. Still my favorite Lois Lane. A couple more murders on the ground before Chan figures it out. Maybe it was time to retire. Mantan spends much of his time trying to romance a maid, the lovely Louise Franklin who was a dancer and nightclub performer. To no avail of course. So goodbye to Charlie Chan and Sons and Birmingham Brown. At least I know that in five years I won't remember any of these and I can start over.