DANGEROUS MONEY, the tenth Charlie Chan film from Monogram, begins on a foggy night on the S.S. Newcastle, on its way to Australia, as Pearson, an American treasury agent, tells Chan (Sidney Toler) that he is tracking down what he calls "hot money," money and artworks stolen from the Philippines during the war. Attempts have been made on his life, and during a festive ceremony to mark the crossing of the Equator, another attempt is successful and Pearson is knifed from behind through his chair. There is a standard suspect pool including the Whipples, snooty British missionaries; Burke, a blustery cotton salesman; Martin, an ichthyologist, and his wife; Freddie Kirk, a knife thrower who is part of the ship's entertainment; Tao Erickson and his sexy Polynesian wife Laura who own a restaurant in Pago Pago; and Rona Simmons who is having a romance with the ship's purser, George. Burke is blackmailing Rona whose papers were rigged by George and whose father was involved in the dispersal of hot material in Samoa. The ship makes a one-day stop in Samoa before heading to Australia, with the passengers roomed in a hotel. Chan has roughly 24 hours to investigate, deal with another knifing death, get past the red herrings, worry about complications caused by son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) and valet Chattanooga Brown (Willie Best), and find the killer. The strengths here are Toler's performance and the interesting setting of the ship for the first half (and one later scene in a fish museum), the weaknesses being a so-so supporting cast and a draggy pace—it feels awfully long for its 66-minute length. Good performances come from Rick Vallin (Tao), Dick Elliott (Burke), Joseph Allen (George) and Gloria Warren (Rona). Yung and Best are not especially effective as comic relief though their half-assed sleuthing does provide Chan with an important clue. Thoroughly average. Pictured at right, the eyes of the killer, though that is not the face of any actor in the movie.
THE TRAP, the eleventh Monogram Chan film, is set in a rented beach house in Malibu where a group of showgirls from Cole King's Vanities is taking a working vacation between shows. There are tensions galore. Marcia, Cole's girlfriend, is set to be the star of the new season and her imperious behavior (among other things, using the Asian girl San Toy as her personal maid) sets the others on edge. Lois, another performer, is under eighteen so technically an illegal hire. Adelaide is secretly married to the troupe's doctor, a no-no according to Cole, and Marcia is ready to blackmail her. Clementine is always on the verge of hysteria and the landlady is a cranky scold who rants about the evils of alcohol. While the women stay in the house, the men (Cole, the doc, and a press agent) sleep in bungalows on the beach. Marcia forces Lois to steal some of Adelaide's letters, then Lois is found dead. Marcia goes missing and is later found dead on the beach. San Toy, a gal pal of Chan’s son Jimmy, calls him to investigate, leading to the best scene in the movie in which valet Birmingham Brown gets the call and mistakenly believes Jimmy is the murder victim. Following the pattern of the other films, Chan and his bungling assistants eventually unmask the killer.
This is Sidney Toler's last movie—he was ill with cancer during production and died six months after production wrapped. It is often said that Toler's illness affected his dialogue delivery and that he could barely stand up so he was often shot seated. That is probably true, but for the most part, these problems are not present on screen. He does have more scenes than usual in which he is sitting down and he does feel a bit low energy (though I've felt that for the last several films), but he delivers his lines fine. Both Toler and the director managed to hide his illness quite well. In fact this film is actually better than the last two, mostly because of the unusual setting and the showgirl cast. The supporting players are a notch above the Monogram norm. Anne Nagel (Marcia), Tanis Chandler (Adelaide), and Lois Austin (Mrs. Thorne, the house mother of the girls) are all good, as is Kirk Alyn (later the first live-action Superman; pictured at left with Toler) as an investigating cop and Larry Blake as the PR man. Minerva Urecal, the queen of ornery old lady character actors, has fun as the landlady. Mantan Moreland is back as Birmingham and his rapport with Yung works well, and their antics are better integrated in the plot. As per usual, it drags in places, but works about as well as the average Monogram series entry. Not a bad way for Toler to bow out. [DVD]
No comments:
Post a Comment