SHADOWS OVER CHINATOWN (1946)

One rainy night, detective Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler), his son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), and valet Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) are on a bus heading to San Francisco, reading newspaper articles about some recent torso murders in which heads, arms and legs of bodies are cut off. Mechanical problems force the driver to make a stop in the small town of Emigrant Gap. It's a short stop but a man's wallet is stolen and Chan is shot at, though he is uninjured as the bullet hits a watch that was a gift from Jimmy. Tilford, a hitchhiking AWOL Marine (who has a gun in his possession) joins the company as they leave. In San Francisco, Chan visits the Bureau of Missing Persons as he seeks to help identify the latest torso murder victim, but winds up taking on another case: helping a sweet little old Scottish lady look for her missing granddaughter, Mary Conover. As it happens, that's also who the Marine (whose name might actually be Thompson) is looking for. Chan determines that the latest victim is not Mary, but at a diner, he recognizes his waitress as Mary, her hair dyed blonde. But Mary is on the run from Mike, a former associate of some sort, who turns out to have been the rainy night bus driver, whom a detective who was on the bus with Chan discovered didn't really work for the bus company. It's going to take all of Chan's skills to crack the cases of Mary and the torso killer, but we never doubt that he can. The ninth of the Monogram Charlie Chan films is a step up from the last few partly due to a script that, while still awfully convoluted, is a little more clever and easier to follow. With a number of settings—the bus, the bus station, the bureau, the diner, hotel rooms, apartments, and some exteriors as well—this doesn't have a claustrophobic feel to it. Sadly, Toler was apparently diagnosed with intestinal cancer at the beginning of filming, and the production of his last movies was adjusted to give Toler a bit less physical activity. It doesn't seem especially noticeable here, though at the end, Toler is not present for the final chase. To me, he had been seeming a bit tired of the role for some time. Victor Sen Yung is back as Jimmy after having done war duty. Some Chan fans much prefer Yung to Benson Fong (as Tommy) who had been in the last several films, but they both seemed fine to me. Bruce Kellogg and Tanis Chandler are good as Tilford and Mary, and it's great fun to have Mary Gordon, who played Sherlock Holmes' landlady in the Basil Rathbone films, present as Mary's grandmother. The title, as if often the case, is misleading, even nonsensical; only the climax plays out in Chinatown and it's in broad daylight. Pictured from left: Chandler, Kellogg, Gordon and Toler. [DVD]