Young women traveling alone are disappearing along an isolated stretch of road, but the authorities have been unable to discover what has happened to them. The viewer soon learns, however, that a sinister gas station owner (George Zucco) has something to do with it. The plotters’ plans meet with difficulties, however, after a motorist (Tod …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Voodoo Man</em> (1944)”
U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) investigate a range war, a not-uncommon plot for a B western. As is usual for the series, both men operate undercover, and largely independently, until opportunity arises for them to cooperate more explicitly. This time around, Nevada claims to be the brother …
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)”
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)”
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)”
