It is my humble theory that the best Charlie Chan movies are the ones that approach the horror genre. With plotlines in this formulaic franchise effectively resembling each other, the horror entries add much-needed extras such as visual interest and eccentric acting. While the series as a whole is lamentably contented to display flat, over-lit hotel rooms (or not use lighting at all, as in Charlie Chan in Panama), horror forces the movies to employ their proto-noir cinematography more often, in the pursuit of added mood. And the best performances occur in the horror entries, with their less-stilted generic expectations, the high point being Boris Karloff’s transcendent performance in Charlie Chan at the Opera. With roughly every fifth entry using this tactic, we can be assured of occasional interest in this otherwise somewhat stagnant series. And here is the latest “scary” Chan, Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum. It is not the best, even for Toler (that would be Charlie Chan at Treasure Island), but it’s well in the top percentile, for largely those reasons.
We open in New York, which was briefly referenced in Charlie Chan in Panama, meaning I’m suddenly watching these movies slightly out of order. It barely matters. Charlie Chan’s latest arrest (from an adventure we have not seen) is murderer and all-around madman Steve McBirney (Marc Lawrence, gangster in films ranging from Key Largo to The Asphalt Jungle and Marathon Man, and undeserving victim McCarthy’s blacklisting). McBirney is due to be executed on December 9th, prompting a good and cynical Christmas joke. Then he escapes police custody with remarkable ease, fleeing in the direction of the plot.
A month’s worth of newspaper headlines rolls past, and McBirney hikes his way to Chinatown, specifically Dr. Cream’s Museum of Crime and Chamber of Horrors – the Wax Museum! In selecting a new horror subject for their genre rip-offs, the Chan folks have happened upon Michael Curtiz’s (you know, Casablanca) 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum. Naturally, this fount of expressionist lighting, lifelike dummies and perpetual lightning storms is rather effective as an early ‘40s gothic setting.
Now, most wax museum horrors hypothesize that the dummies are really murdered people; Charlie Chan takes a different tact. The eponymous and embarrassingly-named Dr. Cream (C. Henry Gordon, Chan regular) is really a professional plastic surgeon, able to use his magical ability to transform any face perfectly. And he likes helping criminals. This is what McBirney is here for, though it shall take a month – a month in which McBirney can plot his revenge on Charlie Chan. Now, McBirney and Cream (and their assistants Grenock and Lily) are all clearly villains, and due up for a denouement arrest. This allows a little genuine suspense to enter into the movie later, as we know who’s fighting against Chan – even while they’re still able to fit in the de rigueur twist ending necessitated by this series.
Chan debates McBirney’s disappearance with Inspector O’Matthews (Joe King, seriously) when he is visited by his son Jimmy (regular Victor Sen Yung, whose name I can somehow never remember), and per-entry cutie pie Mary Bolton (Marguerite Chapman). She is here at the behest of noted psychocriminologist Dr. Otto Von Brom (Michael Visaroff), a mustachioed, manacled, Teutonic master investigator and Chan rival who shares eccentric duties with Cream and McBirney – See how these horror entries up the interesting characters? Von Brom is famous for having solved the dreaded Rocke murder case a decade ago, which saw Joe Rocke hanged for the murder of Butcher Dagon. These two were partners in crime with McBirney, and it is Chan’s theory, quite at odds with Von Brom’s, that Rocke was guilty of murdering Dagon – whose body, incidentally, was found washed up and mangled at the harbor.
Mary is here particularly to ask Chan to partake in this week’s Crime League broadcast, a radio program run by the bland and unassuming Tom Agnew (Ted Osborn), wherein rival criminologists try to solve a famous unsolved crime – in this week’s case, Chan versus Von Brom in regards to the old Rocke Case. Chan is initially hesitant to partake, but upon learning it shall be recorded in Cream’s Wax House (ew!), he’s all for it. Quoth Jimmy: “Cream’s coming here!” Oh…oh man, there’s just something incredibly wrong about that man’s name!
The reason for Cream’s warmth (this ain’t getting any better) is to lay a trap for Chan along with McBirney, who stands there bandaged from his surgery – or at least we initially assume it’s McBirney, for the Chan pictures excel at rendering such details highly suspect. The specific plans involve seating all the incoming murder mystery suspects (though it’s all quite intentionally meta this time) around a table…Chan’s seat shall be electrified, actually a misplaced electric chair, to fulfill McBirney’s own notions of poetic justice.
Chan’s plans, meanwhile, convinced that Butcher Dagon never died. See, Chan knows of Cream’s ability to change one’s face (that still doesn’t sound good), and believes Dagon had 1930s plastic surgery just before passing another body off as his own as a means of framing Rocke. So not only is a mad McBirney on the loose, but so may be Dagon – with just about anyone’s face (though presumably only male genitalia). That’s where our twist is coming from this time!
Jimmy has snuck into Cream’s wax first, alternating his time between disguising himself as a wax dummy and mistaking McBirney’s bandaged proto-Michael Myers for a wax dummy. Wax on, wax off indeed. And amongst this museum full of wax criminals, there is also a wax Chan – Any guesses how this thing’ll play out?
The table is quite literally all set for our murder mystery, as all the suspects are gathered around for the radio broadcast. Of course McBirney isn’t there, as he’s skulking around in the shadows all mummy-like, and O’Matthews isn’t there, ‘cause cops are useless in these things. There is a new guy, Carter Lane (Archie Twitchell), here solely because Mary needs a lovebird partner to satisfy formula. There’s also a new guy named Edwards (Harold Goodwin), here for absolutely no reason whatsoever. There’s still one more suspect, the widow Rocke (Hilda Vaughn), doing the ever-popular “pretend to be wax” thing.
Grenock, McBirney’s henchgoon, has convinced janitor Willie to “execute” a wax dummy in the electric chair. Because Willie is functionally retarded, he’s quite happy to go along with this, unaware that the switch is actually connected to Chan’s seat. But then, one minute before the scheduled Chansassination, Von Brom arbitrarily switches seats with Chan. Thus, after the traditional Chan temporary blackout, it is Von Brom who has been murdered. (Cream screams.)
Tom shuts off the radio broadcast now it’s getting good, while Chan discovers Von Brom wasn’t electrocuted. Phew! Nope, he was shot with a poison headhunter dart. Actually, that’s far worse! And anyone here could be the killer (and Dagon, hence the motive takes care of itself). Then we learn why the electrocution thing didn’t happen: Lily, Cream’s cheesecake assistant, feared such a murder would reveal the mobster hideout below, and therefore cut the wires.
Thus begins a standard series of questions between Chan and all the suspects. Naturally, they’re all locked inside the wax museum, and naturally a call cannot be made to outside. All in all, this may just well be the most compressed entry in the series, which is a huge plus. Setup aside, it’s almost entirely in real time. (It’s also, I think, the shortest Chan movie to date, at a mere 63 minutes long. And here I thought these things were all scrupulously one reel longer!)
Jimmy’s aide leads Chan to discover the dreaded chamber of Cream. Here is the Cream laboratory where Cream changes faces. Now certain of Cream’s sour relationship with the mob, Jimmy cuffs the Cream puff. It’s now clear Dagon killed Von Brom to hide his own new identity, and Chan is next – if McBirney doesn’t get him first.
Initially Dagon (or some shadowy giallo figure) does Chan a favor by killing McBirney (the masked guy) just before he’s about to strike. But no matter, for Dagon goes right ahead and does even worse, hurling a knife straight into Chan’s back!
Oh wait, did you think Charlie Chan would get murdered halfway through his franchise? No, silly person, it was his dummy. But as for McBirney, yeah, he’s dead, and yeah, that masked guy was McBirney. At least this gives Chan a new clue, in the form of a telltale surgical scar on the back of McBirney’s neck – Dagon will have the same mark.
And whoever Dagon is, he now plans to get the drop on Chan using the old “you think I’m a dummy when I’m not” ploy. Chan sees through this, and employs the old “do something to draw the killer out” ploy. Thus Chan convinces Dagon that a matchstick is poisonous, and Dagon is revealed to be – Tom…the radio program producer. Which means this whole evening was setup by him. He’d have never been caught had he not done this! But when have the endings to Chan films ever been particularly logical?
Then Jimmy kicks Chan, thinking him a dummy, and all is over.
This is undoubtedly in the upper echelons of the Chan series, as are practically all the spooky episodes. There’s little more to say at this point. The setting and characters are both interesting, the plot takes advantage of added waxiness – barring a phenomenally interesting guest star, this is the highest plateau formula Chan can reach. I just wish I could close this out better, but…all these people keep interrupting me!
Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 11 Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)
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