CHARLIE CHAN CHANTHOLOGY Part 1

I donât know how it was in your town, but back when local TV stations showed movies on a regular basis, quite a few of these stations found a niche for mystery movies on early Saturday or Sunday afternoons, filling a gap between lunch and an afternoon ball game. It seemed that every other weekend Iâd see a Sherlock Holmes movie, and now that MPI has given the Fox/Universal Holmes movies such fine treatment on DVD, itâs only fitting that Sherlockâs regular alternate timeslot partner get the full digital treatment as well.

Oddly enough though, the six features included in CHARLIE CHAN CHANTHOLOGY arenât exactly a case of putting the Chinese detectiveâs best foot forward. Fox had made an excellent run of the series, starting in 1931 with CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON. And carry on he did, solving mysteries all over the world through a whopping 27 feature films, only stopping after the attack on Pearl Harbor when Fox hesitated to keep a pseudo-Asian face in their famous spotlights.

Well, technically it wasnât really an Asian face. Both of Foxâs Chans â" Warner Oland, who retired from the series to fight a losing battle with alcoholism and illness in 1938, and Sidney Toler who took over the role with CHARLIE CHAN IN HONOLULU â" were of Scandinavian descent, but that was back in the days before that sort of thing was considered offensive (a "fact from the vault" noted on the back cover of each volume in this set). Balancing the scales in this regard is that Charlie was such an overwhelmingly positive role model, and every other Asian role in the series was filled by a genuine Asian actor.

Fox may have held back, but Poverty Row studio Monogram was only too happy to pick up Chanâs option. Their own Asian sleuth, Mr. Wong, had run aground a few years previous â" Boris Karloff departed, and erstwhile "Number One Son" Keye Luke failed to catch on as a replacement â" but Monogram managed to find a working formula with the better known detective for a string of 17 B-movie features. The key to that formula, surprisingly, turned out to be "race appeal". Monogram had recently cast Harlem star Mantan Moreland as the comic relief in their horror picture REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, and it saved the picture. Putting Moreland together with the Chinese detective was just the ticket they needed.

CHARLIE CHAN IN THE SECRET SERVICE
Chan is now a Secret Service operative stationed in Washington, D.C., and is called in on the case when an arms inventor is found dead in his mansion, and his invention missing. The difference between Fox dynamism and the Monogram style is all too apparent in their first try. For a demonstration in padding, check the sequence in which weâre shown Chan leaving his office, getting into a cab, arriving at his destination, getting out of the cab⦠all too strident, unmotivated soundtrack music from the Monogram library. Suspects are hustled into a room to look guilty while Chan grills them. Diversion arrives with the introduction of Number 3 Son Tommy Chan (Benson Fong) and his sister Iris (Marianne Quon) â" two of the 14 Chan children - who naturally try to tag along on the sleuthing, but are even dumber than their siblings were in previous pictures. After some shooting, Tommy asks, "Gosh, did they kill ya, Pop?" The kids tangle with a more diverting diversion in the basement coal bin: chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Moreland). Since the solution to the mystery relies on information withheld from viewers, unraveling it isnât much fun (despite a few scenes in a crowded mad scientist lab), leaving it up to the antics of Brown and the youngsters to perk things up. This initial feature suffers from tinny sound, but the rest of the set improves on this fault.

THE CHINESE CAT
In a case set in San Francisco, a mystery author (Ian Keith) bases his latest book on a six-month old unsolved murder, and when the victimâs daughter asks Charlie to investigate, Chan takes a bet with the author that he can solve the case in 48 hours. Tommy, playing hooky from U of C, tags along. Birmingham, now a taxi driver, keeps getting mixed up with the Chans, despite his fear of corpses, and the diamond smugglers involved in the case blow up his cab. The trail leads to two more murders and ends at a carnival funhouse, where Charlie and Tommy are captured by the gang and roughed up. The mystery is a dud, but the substitution of a surprising amount of action makes this entry more entertaining.

MEETING AT MIDNIGHT

In this entry, which bears the reissue title BLACK MAGIC, Birmingham takes a job as butler in the household of a phony medium. Number One Daughter Frances Chan - played by an actress named Frances Chan! â" attends a séance at which the medium is shot dead with a "magic bullet". The local police use Francesâ involvement to coerce Charlie into taking the case.

Continued in Part 2â¦