A dying Sidney Toler said farewell to Charlie Chan and to films in general when he played the famous Hollywood detective in a rather shoddy entry for this series. Shoddy even for Monogram Pictures and its head Sam Katzman.
A troupe of show girls take up residence at a Malibu beach house where quite a few murders take place before Charlie Chan solves the case. It's a bloodier than usual Chan film in that respect. Toler gets into it because a Chinese member of the troupe Barbara Jane Wong is the original accused party and she's dating Victor Sen Yung who is number 2 son Jimmy Chan. Fortunately for her and for justice in general she gets the real detective in the family on the case.
When the murderer is revealed you'll find it a truly far fetched motive and the presence of the perpetrator in the troupe truly bizarre. Another bizarre thing is Minerva Urecal playing one of sprightly Miss Sunshine roles as the housekeeper. The woman is such a puritanical pill around the nubile women that you know she HAS to be a red herring. And guess what, she is.
The Charlie Chan series went down considerably in quality when it got to Monogram and it's too bad that poor Toler couldn't have had a decent Chan film to go out on.
A troupe of show girls take up residence at a Malibu beach house where quite a few murders take place before Charlie Chan solves the case. It's a bloodier than usual Chan film in that respect. Toler gets into it because a Chinese member of the troupe Barbara Jane Wong is the original accused party and she's dating Victor Sen Yung who is number 2 son Jimmy Chan. Fortunately for her and for justice in general she gets the real detective in the family on the case.
When the murderer is revealed you'll find it a truly far fetched motive and the presence of the perpetrator in the troupe truly bizarre. Another bizarre thing is Minerva Urecal playing one of sprightly Miss Sunshine roles as the housekeeper. The woman is such a puritanical pill around the nubile women that you know she HAS to be a red herring. And guess what, she is.
The Charlie Chan series went down considerably in quality when it got to Monogram and it's too bad that poor Toler couldn't have had a decent Chan film to go out on.