THE CHINESE CAT (1944)

A businessman named Manning is in his study, playing a game of chess with himself when someone sneaks out of a secret passage and shoots him dead, but not before he can deliberately knock some chess pieces off the board, as though leaving a message about his killer. The door to the study was locked and the police make little progress with the case so it is declared closed. Months later, mystery author Paul Recknik publishes Murder by Madame, a thinly fictionalized account of the Manning case that singles out the widow as the killer. Manning’s daughter Leah is dating police detective Dennis, but his hands are tied by the DA, so she visits detective Charlie Chan and his son Tommy, who are only in town for 48 hours, for help in reopening the case. Chan runs into taxi driver Birmingham Brown, whom he encountered on his previous case and with Dennis in tow, they're off. The affair involves jewel thieves, a pair of twin brothers, a shuttered amusement park fun house, a bombing, a poisonous gas, some statuettes (including one of a cat), and the chess pieces from the opening scene. Chan and Tommy even endure getting beaten up and Tommy faints from poison gas before they wrap up the case. With all the incidents that take place, this one, the second in the series from Poverty Row studio Monogram, moves at an acceptable pace, but the low budget and uninspiring supporting cast hurt a bit. Sidney Toler (Chan) and Benson Fong (Tommy) are OK, and Mantan Moreland begins to make himself indispensable to the series as the scared but helpful Birmingham Brown. Joan Woodbury, Ian Keith, and Cy Kendall are the most familiar faces in the cast. The comic relief is fairly mild, and Tommy has a line that Charlie could use in his advertising: “When Chan takes the case, pop goes the case!” Pictured is Mantan Moreland freaked out by a funhouse skeleton. [DVD]