CHARLIE CHAN CHANTHOLOGY Part 2

Continued from Part 1, we carry on with our examination of MGM's box set of Charlie Chan films made by Monogram Pictures during World War II...

With a trio of wartime Chan films released, Monogram had clearly shown their strengths and weaknesses. Fledgling screenwriter George Callahan, also working on the studio's Shadow features, showed a flair for working within Poverty Row restrictions. While the Fox Chans made the most of exotic locations, sterling guest stars and production values, Monogram made due with "pulp value". Sometimes a definite location was mentioned, but the Monogram Chans really take place in Anycity, USA generic studio sets on the Monogram lot and more emphasis was placed on spy stuff like hidden rooms and death traps. Charlie (Sidney Toler) wasn't given much actual sleuthing to do his job was to pose a threat to the killer, who would get caught while attempting to kill the detective. At this point, this easily discovered perpetrator would generally be murdered himself, leaving Chan to hunt down the mastermind behind the crimes.

Bowing to the inevitable, Mantan Moreland's Birmingham Brown character is now the fulltime chauffeur and assistant to the Chan family, here represented by "bookworm" Number Four Son Edward (Edwin Luke). The mystery is similar to that of CHARLIE CHAN IN THE SECRET SERVICE: the inventor of a weapon (in this case a nerve gas formula) is killed in his home, bringing Charlie into his eccentric house of secrets. The location, along with houseguests who collect ventriloquist dummies and life masks, provides ample opportunity for death traps, but Mantan doesn't have much to do except become befuddled by Eddie's "big words" vocabulary. The mystery's solution goes so far into pulp territory as to hinge on the use of a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE type mask.

Charlie is on the trail of a spy when his target is murdered, apparently by a member of his own spy ring, who are after a radar device. The killer used a car belonging to a radio actress who works at a station in the same building as the radar lab (which is equipped with Ken Strickfaden's FRANKENSTEIN gizmos). "Hmmm. Radio... Radar..." is about the level of Chan's detective work here. Number Three Son Tommy (Benson Fong) is back again, and comic/singer Benny Carter has a number of cameos to run through a running routine with Moreland. The radio/TV station backdrop yields some eccentric red herrings, including slipping Shakespearean actor "Horace Carlos", who is now most famous for horror roles. Actor Leonard Mudie - whose genre résumé stretches back to A MESSAGE FROM MARS (1921) through THE MUMMY and LOST HORIZON, up to his final role in the STAR TREK pilot - does a good job aping both Boris Karloff and John Barrymore in this too small role. Of course, the guilty man is station manager I. Stanford Jolley, but who's pulling his strings? Tommy and Birmingham show off their talent for getting caught in death traps, including a weather chamber and an elevator with a trap door. Other items more common to later spy movies than '40s mysteries are murder by a combination of gas and cigarettes. Clever, but outlandish.

Earl Derr Biggers' may have been spinning in his grave over Monogram's treatment of his famous creation, but he may have found some solace in this entry. Helmed by Phil Karlson, now remembered more for KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL than his many B-movies, it has a more serious tone and more creative camerawork than Phil Rosen's entries. Rosen, a prolific director throughout the 1920s and '30s, was reaching the end of his career (he would return to Chan only for RED DRAGON), but Karlson was just getting started and seems intent on impressing prospective producers with his mobile camera, unusual angles and hard-boiled atmosphere. Not that Monogram beefs up the budget to help him out a bank vault is the most elaborate set, and there's some recycled stock footage of Toler from SECRET SERVICE. Much of the later action takes place in sewer tunnels, which despite MGM's restoration efforts remains too dim to see the actors. George Chandler, a popular character actor and later the President of the Screen Actor's Guild, is uncredited but has a significant role as a coffee shop owner so much so that MGM includes him on the cover art. His shop holds a '40s museum piece: a talking jukebox equipped with a telephone wire that allows an operator to play requested songs! This system, which saved on record manufacturing during wartime, never really caught on, despite the use of flirty female "operators". This particular model is also equipped with a hidden video camera(!) by the crooks, which provides an important clue. The film is padded out with a romance engineered by Chan between an inexperienced gumshoe and a pretty bank secretary, but the main plot about thieves after radioactive material in the aforementioned bank vault trundles along until becoming mired in the murky sewers. The comedy team of Moreland and Fong tickles us with their famous "No U-Turn" routine.

One can appreciate the handsome packaging and menu designs of this set, along with the respectful handling of the films themselves. However, as each title runs about an hour, and not even trailers are included as extras, MGM is shortchanging fans a bit. Each disc could easily hold a double or triple feature, making for a more affordable package of two or three discs. Either that, or a more extensive collection including at least the five remaining Toler Chans could have been offered, if not the six following entries with Roland Winters. Surely they recognize that they're catering to a special audience in presenting these sturdy old programmers, and it would make more sense to reward this core market group with a more economic (and thus more essential) package.

I'm often asked how I grade the subject of each review, often by disgruntled readers who disagree with my rating and think I've flipped my lid. When grading time comes, I often think of these mid-level Charlie Chan films, which deliver unpretentious entertainment that fills an hour with significant complaint. To me, they stand as a defining example of the B-movie, in more ways than one.