BLACK MAGIC (1944)

At a séance being held by psychic William Bonner and his wife Justine, William asks for questions and a male voice asks "What happened in London the night of October 5th, 1935?" The lights go out and Bonner falls forward, shot dead, though when the police arrive, no bullet is found. Because Charlie Chan's daughter Frances was present at the séance, Chan is called in to investigate. Among others present: a woman whose father was driven to suicide by Bonner; a couple who were being blackmailed by Bonner; a magician supply store owner; and Bonner's new valet, none other than Chan's buddy Birmingham Brown. Mrs. Bonner, apparently in a drugged trance, goes to the top of a downtown building and follows the orders of a voice that tells her to step off the ledge, which she does, plummeting to her death. Chan himself winds up a near victim of the same drug, but manages to outwit the killer and unmask him by the end, answering the question of what happened in London in October 1935. The third Monogram film in the Chan series has the nicely atmospheric setting of the séance, and a great scene of Chan being hypnotized by a combination of a drug and bright lights shining in his eyes, but is otherwise indicative of the low-budget slide the films were taking. Sidney Toler (Chan) and Mantan Moreland (Birmingham) are tolerable, but the supporting cast is bland, with the exception of Jacqueline DeWit as Mrs. Bonner. Charles Jordan and Claudia Dell, as Bonner's two confederates, are fine but don't have enough to do. Frances Chan (who plays Frances Chan) is awful, barely able to read her lines, let alone emote—though she is nice looking and, to be fair, there is nothing to her character. The writers still aren't quite sure how to handle the character of Birmingham, leaving Moreland (pictured) a bit at sea; his gimmick here, trying to vanish from sticky situations by snapping his fingers and saying "Abracadabra," is funny the first two times, but not so much the next ten times. Still like most of the Monogram Chans, it's entertaining. Later retitled for television and home video as MEETING AT MIDNIGHT. [DVD]