Kane Richmond stars as Lamont Cranston in the first entry in a short Monogram series about the Shadow, with Barbara Read co-starring as Margo Lane (here explicitly Cranston’s fiancée,). A moderately interesting situation — jewels smuggled inside a casket and fatal falls — is squandered by weak writing. Fans of magazine and radio show alike …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Shadow Returns</em> (1946)”
Charlie Chan investigates when bank employees are inexplicably murdered by cobra venom, and the sleuth (Sidney Toler) suspects a connection to a pre-war case that involved the same means. Adding interest to the setting is a “jukebox” which allows the patron to place a request to a live disc jockey — and this device forms …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Shanghai Cobra</em> (1945)”
A building housing an experimental radio-television station and a nearby research laboratory is the central location for this Charlie Chan mystery. As the detective (Sidney Toler) investigates a murder tied in with the station’s staff and performers, he suspects that someone may be targeting the improved radar being developed in the lab. There are a …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Scarlet Clue</em> (1945)”
An unpleasant scientist works in his home, which is peopled by employees and relatives whom he mistreats, and who hate him. When he is apparently slain by his own death trap, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is on hand to investigate, assisted once again by one of his children (No. 4 son Eddie, played by Edwin …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Jade Mask</em> (1945)”
In this series entry, also known as Meeting at Midnight, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) investigates when a psychic is murdered during a séance his daughter Frances (Frances Chan) is attending. Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland), who has taken a job with the psychics because Chan is planning to return to Hawaii, is also on hand for …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Black Magic</em> (1944)”
