An ex-con who has been convicted of murder and bank robbery has just nine days left before his execution, but fortunately for him, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) volunteers to help prove his innocence before time runs out. The man had been convicted largely based on the fact that his fingerprints were found at the scene …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Dark Alibi</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)”
Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) investigates the locked-room murder of wealthy chess expert Thomas P. Manning (Sam Flint). He has little time to do so, as he must head back to Washington in a couple days to continue his war work. There’s a moderately effective use of a funhouse setting — I always enjoy it when …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Chinese Cat</em> (1944)”
After a hiatus, star Sidney Toler brought Charlie Chan to Monogram Pictures in this wartime mystery. A inventor working on an advanced torpedo design is killed for the plans of his invention, though the exact means of the crime are unclear initially. Charlie is called upon to sift through a houseful of suspects, including a …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Charlie Chan in the Secret Service</em> (1944)”
One of the strongest entries in the Charlie Chan series sees the detective (Warner Oland) racing to Germany (part of the trip aboard the Hindenburg) and the 1936 Olympics to catch up with a murderer and a stolen aeronautical invention before the latter can be sold to sinister foreign buyers. Two sons lend a hand …
Read the full post →“<em>Charlie Chan at the Olympics</em> (1937)”
An evocative atmosphere blending mystery with horror is a highlight of this entry in the Charlie Chan series, as the sleuth (Warner Oland) travels to Egypt to investigate illicit sales of artifacts found in an excavation but encounters a disappearance and murder as well. Strong support is provided by Frank Conroy (as a professor connected …
“Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff in…” says the title card of this movie, easily one of the strongest entries in the long-running Charlie Chan mystery series, thanks to setting, cast, and resolution. Karloff plays an amnesiac opera singer who escapes from a lunatic asylum after recovering his memory that someone — presumably his then-wife — …
Read the full post →“<em>Charlie Chan at the Opera</em> (Twentieth Century Fox, 1936)”
