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| Available at Amazon.com |
Charlie Chan wasn’t a private investigator, but a detective on the Honolulu police force. He wasn’t in the sleuth game for the money or the ladies. He served and protected the public. His legendary ability to unravel a case and expose the guilty made him an international celebrity. He traveled the globe on his vacations to teach his mixture of forensics and Chinese philosophy. He probably also took these vacations to escape his family. He had more kids than the Osmonds. No matter where on the globe he went, he could neither escape crime or all of his sons. Charlie Chan: Volume Five collects the final seven movies that Sidney Toler made at Fox.
There are groups that protest Toler being made up to look Asian in the leading role. They want the Charlie Chan films banned and burned. But there’s an Asian-American dominating the screen in these movies. Sen Young is the true star of the series in the role of Number Two Son, Jimmy Chang. While Charlie slowly ponders the clues, Jimmy is the man of action. He goes undercover to smoke out the guilty or expose the truly innocent. He’s being chased by killers and risking his life. Young compares favorably to Keye Luke’s Number One Son of the Warner Oland films. He might be Number Two, but he’s more like Number One-B Son.
Charlie Chan in Panama (1940 – 66 minutes) is a Mr. Moto script retooled when having a Japanese hero became a bad thing in America. Charlie Chan has to expose enemy agents before they sabotage the Panama Canal. The US Navy is in the process of bringing a fleet of ship through the locks to get them from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Charlie Chan goes undercover to get a greater sense of who wants to plot destruction. No disguise can cover up Jimmy Chan’s crime busting skills. If it wasn’t for Charlie Chan, we would have really been screwed after Pearl Harbor.
Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940 – 76 minutes) is a remake of Charlie Chan Carries On. The original with Warner Oland was lost in a vault fire. The remake has a group of travelers on an around the world cruise being thinned out by mysterious deaths. Charlie and Jimmy board this cursed ship for the leg between Honolulu and San Francisco. There’s plenty of who done it action with the classic “lights go out” before the real killer can be exposed moment.
Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940 – 63 minutes) has an old nemesis lure the detective into a trap. What a better location than a wax museum filled with famous killers to get revenge on the famous lawman? Jimmy goes nuts in the rouges gallery. He does his best to protect his old man or is it really pop?
Murder Over New York (1940 – 65 minutes) is another film with Charlie involved in protecting America’s military. This time he’s in the Big Apple for a police convention. Turns out that enemy agents are sabotaging a nearby military airplane factory. Chan and son need to bust up the spy ring. You will be shocked at all the space there once was inside a commercial flight.
Dead Men Tell (1941 – 61 minutes) has a pirate ghost going to extremes to protect his booty. An elderly woman claims to be a descendant of a notorious pirate. She charters a boat to follow the course on the pirate’s map. Things get ugly quick and it’s up to Charlie and Jimmy Chan to scare up the ghost. Is it really a supernatural homicidal maniac or homicidal maniac in a pirate costume?
Charlie Chan in Rio (1941 – 60 minutes) takes elements from the plot of The Black Camel and sprinkles them with a Brazilian sass. Charlie and Jimmy arrive in time for Carnival. But the Samba beat turns into a body count. They mix plenty of travelogue footage with the soundstage action. There’s plenty of happy fruit hat wearing female dancers at the nightclub. The big mystery is how they let Jimmy find love in the form of Lili Wong (played by Iris Wong)?
Castle in the Desert (1942 – 62 minutes) has Charlie and Jimmy arriving at a castle in the Mojave Desert. They have to solve the mystery of who is running loose in the compound with plenty of poison. It’s a deadly resort. Jimmy once more puts himself in more jeopardy than his pop.
After Castle in the Desert, the Chan series went over to Monogram Pictures, a legendary low-budget outfit. Sidney Toler made 11 more films. No longer would the series be given a prestige budget. None of the Monogram titles rivaled the work done on these Fox films although they did bring in Mantan Moreland as his chauffeur.
It’s thrilling that in these timid days that all the locatable Charlie Chan films have found their way onto DVDs. There are people who declare this series as inflicting a negative stereotype onto theater goers. But this isn’t that nasty. If you approach the seven films in Charlie Chan: Volume Five as vehicles for Sen Yung, you can be entertained without squirming. He’s got stellar action-comedy skills. He makes sure that Charlie can spend more time thinking than being hunted down by the terrorists. These films remind us that when America was on the brink of War, Charlie Chan kept us safe while remaining a public servant.
The video is 1.33:1 full frame. The transfers on all seven films are exceptional for their age. Nothing is too messed up. The audio is Dolby Digital mono. There’s no pops or clicks cluttering up the sound. The subtitles are in English, Spanish and French.
The Era of Chan (34:43) gives the behind the scenes action for how the Chan series wrapped up at Fox. They focus on how Dead Men Tell used lacquered lens to give a spooky feel to the dock side action. There’s not much talk about how the series did when it went to Monogram.
Theatrical Trailers are included for all seven films. They really knew how to push the suspense on this series.
Still Galleries include production photos, portraits and advertising.
Charlie Chan: Volume Five brings me back to a time when Charlie Chan films were a weekend afternoon staple on UHF channels. The mysteries will keep you guessing. Although the biggest guessing game is wondering if Jimmy Chan will get killed before the film ends.
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Fox Home Entertainment presents Charlie Chan: Volume Five. Starring: Sidney Toler & Sen Yung. Box set Contents: 7 movies on 4 discs. Rating: Not Rated. Released on DVD: Sept 16, 2008. Available at Amazon.com
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