This movie was fucking boring!
…But we’ll get to that in due time. For now, I must address something interesting about Charlie Chan in the Secret Service – its macro story:
When last we left Chan, what feels like eons ago to me (I’ve kept a mighty blog buffer, and now I’ve mostly squandered it), the series was being put out to pasture by the Fox Studios on the eve of World War II, abandoned for no longer fitting into their business model. And that’s damn well usually a sure sign of franchise death right there – studio abandonment. Only the heartiest of film franchises can survive past that!
To my extreme displeasure, Charlie Chan is one of those franchises, for their film rights passed on in whole. But who would want them? The major studios were all done with B-filmmaking. Why, it was Sidney Toler, the actor himself, who rescued Chan – with intent to self-finance further entries, Fox still distributing. Apparently, the man simply loved playing Chan that much – What other popular film role demands an actor to be fat, elderly, and a closet racist? It’s perfect!
Ah, but Fox wouldn’t bite. Remember, their new studio head, Spyros Skouras, was determined to shun Bs. From that day on, the Fox name would be associated solely with prestige!
Enter Monogram Pictures, the latest Chan distributors – and with 17 Chan films to come, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Now, I suppose such a studio switch isn’t entirely unheard of, and I’m sure many lesser franchises manage the transition with little to no attention at all, but still…And to get an idea of how sensitively artistic this latest Chan iteration would be, keep in mind Toler’s central coconspirator was Phil Krasne, a lawyer. Only the best of cinema comes from such origins!
Now…Monogram Pictures…
The 1940s were dominated by a unique phenomenon, part of the overall macro Hollywood history. Essentially, we see the origin of independent cinema. Operating separately from the Big Six studios, Hollywood’s Poverty Row studios specialized in continuing B-movie filmmaking when it was otherwise abandoned, fashioning a market niche for pre-exploitation fare that was purely disposable and never good. They existed to fill up the schedules of the majors, who, as monopolies, controlled movie theaters as well as production – this was the unique situation at the time. And amongst these Poverty Row beasts, cranking out cheap and worthless westerns and Chans, were the aforementioned Monogram, along with Grand National and Republic Pictures. This is the sort of stuff you now find in those hideous bargain DVD grab pits down at the Wal-Mart. These are the sorts of studios that would employ Bela Lugosi.
Monogram represents the turds of the ‘40s. I know it’s hard to imagine, in today’s cinematic climate, a franchise being worse off for leaving the Fox Studios, but it’s…it’s…it’s like the Asylum, I guess. You know, those wonderful people who did Transmorphers.
Still, Godard dedicated Breathless to the studio, so there’s that.
I could say piles more about Monogram, but as the chief franchise producer of the ‘40s, Chan aside, I shall have plenty of time to do that. For now, against all my personal desires, it’s time to address Charlie Chan in the Secret Service, the first Charlie Chan movie in an interminable one and a half years. Resuming the grand Chan production schedule of old, it is only the first of three Chan pictures of 1944, so quantity ain’t an issue here.
Quality, though…The Chan pictures were inevitably at a disadvantage, compared to Fox, with lessened budgets and reduced star power – That star power, never terribly great (excepting occasional visits by the likes of Boris Karloff), is now reduced entirely to Sidney Toler himself. So basically, it’s estimated Monogram had only 40% of the resources Fox had.
That handicap demands one particular thing to rectify it – excellent screenplays. Monogram could still compete on that level, conceivably, but…if Secret Service is any indication, they had absolutely zero interest in this. Quick!, imagine the single most stereotypical, cliché-driven Chan entry possible. You’ve just imagined this specific movie. So we’ve got a murder mystery, as per the already-immovable formula setup, stripped of all unique, gimmick elements – this is merely a drawing room murder mystery, with the blandest possible sets, the blandest possible characters, and an almost total inattention to clues, twists, and so forth. I did not like it.
So…opening murder. [Yawn.] It still being World War II, it can be used to justify the premise, then ignored completely from that point on. So our inaugural Monogram victim is Dr. Milton (actor unknown, maybe at his insistence), a scientist in D.C. creating anti-U-boat devices for the U.S. government. Enjoy that sentence? It’s the most exciting thing about Secret Service. Even the titular Secret Service element is reduced to a mere sentence or two, merely an excuse to have two of Monogram’s burly lug actors orbit the film’s periphery.
Considering how remarkably stuporous everything already is, when I saw Milton simply drop to the ground apropos of nothing, I thought he’d died of boredom. I nearly have by the time we learn, 47 minutes later (out of 64) what did do it.
Oh hey, it’s Mantan Moreland! This is, presumably, the grand innovation of the Mono-Chans, the systematic, regularized inclusion of institutional anti-negro racism (as opposed to in only every third entry, as under Fox). Yes, that bug-eyed self-stereotype up there is to become a series regular. For now, though, Mantan is playing Birmingham Brown (yes, Brown), manservant to the dead Milton, and Monogram’s idea of comic relief. Considering the inauspicious racial sensitivity Chan has shown to blacks in the past (Charlie Chan in Egypt’s reprehensible Stepin Fetchit), Mantan is relatively subdued (for now, at least). Sure, it’s the same atrocious series of jokes where a black man is scared of ghosts at every possible waking moment (despite how antiseptic the movie sets he occupies are), but it is…well, it’s less hammy. In isolation, divorced from my multi-week immersion in ‘30s and ‘40s xenophobia, it’s still mighty questionable.
Oh well, I’ll have plenty more time to address Mantan, so I’ll let it rest for now, simply to say this – Apparently, Mantan was a means to attract previously-reticent black audiences to the Chan films. Hmm, Mantan Moreland then, sub-Barbershop releases like Lottery Ticket today…is there anything respectable studios can offer niche racial audiences?
We know how this’ll go from here. Charlie Chan shall be summoned from wherever he is to investigate the murder, following the exact same contours as he always does. As per usual, Chan shall be hounded at all times by one of his (‘40s) hip children, increasingly useless in their attempts to aid Chan in his mysterizin’. And wouldn’t you see that shot above? Yup, Chan’s got ‘imself two sirelings to fend off today (in addition to Mantan eventually, who’s basically a part of this mob), and nope, neither of ‘em is our former pal Jimmy Chan, let alone the marvelous Lee Chan. Now it’s a new Chan regular, switched up under Monogram for whatever damn casting reason: “Number Three Son” Tommy Chan…I said Tommy Chan, NOT Tommy Chong – I wish. Playing young Tommy is Benson Fong, doing an impression of Victor Sen Yung doing an impression of Keye Luke, as sanitized, watered-down and uninteresting as that description would indicate. We’ve got this guy with us for, I think, another 11 movies or so.
Also there is, like, “Number Two Daughter” or whatever, Iris Chan (Marianne Quon), doing an imitation of Benson Fong’s imitations. This is the actress’s only film ever, so at least she ain’t a regular – I think Monogram was testing their waters, and making some pretty stupid decisions in the process.
(In case you ask (sure), Chan now cites his family as amounting to a whopping 14 children, a weak attempt to patch up the continuity error of these two brand new broodlings. It doesn’t work.)
Secret Service’s silliest scene is up next, a fine example of the problems inherent in the Mono-Chans. Chan is summoned to Milton’s estate, and it’s Chan away! Dramatic stock music plays irrespective of what’s on-screen – simply the purest padding in this already-short movie. Chan walks! He walks to the elevator, out the lobby, to a taxi, within the taxi apparently whilst it drives, then across the lengthy front lawns of Milton’s estate. Yup, it’s five minutes of Chan reaching the setting, though the awful music would make you think you were watching the assassination of Hitler. And once again, the Chan films succeed in making me laugh, but not in the way they intend.
The estate is infested with the same off-the-shelf mystery suspects we always get, who are perhaps somehow even less interesting than they normally are – I shan’t be exploring these actors, ‘cause I got that there Chan ennui somethin’ fierce! The movie doesn’t care either, from what I can tell, since a butler or Secret Service agent (or someone whose identity I missed while staring out my window at a bird) presents the cast to Chan in the most systematically bland way possible. “This is X, who is an X. This is Y, who is a Y. Remember all this, we’ll never distinguish them again.” It’s actually kind of efficient in its not giving a shit. And of course there’s a Paul amongst this bunch – the instant I see a Chan with no Paul, I’m getting wasted!
Also, one of the guys is in a wheelchair (let’s say it’s Paul). This is noteworthy only because it A) affords a stupid, red herring twist where he’s only pretending to be disabled for “political” reasons, and B) they make some egregious continuity errors where we see “Paul” standing among his compatriots long in advance of revealing his dark secret. That’s this movie’s quality in a nutshell.
There is a fantabulous lack of clues in this thing, with Chan simply waiting until the 40th minute for the coroner to return from Padding Ville to reveal Milton’s cause of death. In the meantime, it’s just blah blah blah left-handed suspect, blah blah blah glancing eyes in the darkness, blah blah blah Chan’s children prove sickeningly incompetent, blah blah blah someone in this room is a murderer. Even with a nearly two week Chan break, aided by Dirty Harry, this crap hasn’t become in and of itself any more interesting. Oh, and blah blah blah looming gun hand in the shadows. That’s, like, the 36th of these I’ve seen in this series – and this is merely the 31st entry!
In all this complete worthlessness, we at least have Sidney Toler’s established performance to fall back upon, right…Right? Well, seemingly without his evil Fox overlords breathing down his neck, Toler was free to evolve Chan as he saw fit – No more of that semi-Warner Oland “I’m drunk right now” stuff. Rather, Toler exhibits a marked increase in his already-notable sarcasm. This ought to be fun, only Toler seems to have become as listless as both the film and myself – barely shuffling across the screen as new regular director Phil Rosen struggles to stretch his shots out to their fullest stupor. Ugh!
As for Chan’s kids, here’s a scene that somehow amused me in isolation. So here it is:
Chan: “You are very smart boy. Trouble with modern children is, never smart in right place.”
Tommy: “Did Confucius say that, Pop?”
Chan: “No, I say that.”
Tommy follows this up instantly with an abortive attempt to describe one of the suspects, a grotesque old German maid. As per Tommy and his “hep cat” (his words) slangisms, this Mrs. Hargue is “picky icky,” “way off the beat,” “a flick chick gone to seed, who got bats in her hats and bees in her bustle.” Ah, the ‘40s! It’s hilariously dated!
Here’s something else of interest (I am grasping at freaking straws here!): Chan discovers Milton’s mad science laboratory, with those glorious old electricity devices. Who doesn’t love that stuff?
I’ve treaded water nearly as much as the movie, so let’s just rush through the “plot” that gets heaped on in the final 20-ish minutes…Milton was electrified, killed by a closet light switch. His murderer is a Mr. Vega, or a Von Vegan, or something, depending upon which unproofed script draft they were filming that day. Then, for the hell of it (running time not yet satisfied), Victor Von Vincent Vega or whatever is himself killed, shot to death, even though we never hear a gunshot. That ain’t an intentional trickery, it’s a movie mistake, pure and simple – DAMN, goofs and gaffes are the bane of the cinematic mystery genre! So now, once again, Chan’s got another freaking murder on his hands. ‘Cause you gotta have two deaths per film, by series formula.
Chan, having just conducted a trademark Chanquest leading up to the accusation of Mr. Von Las Vegas, reassembles the exact same suspects to go through another 10 minutes of what is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same Chanquest we just saw. The worst passages of Leviticus are more interesting than this! And then…ah, who cares, really, the killer is arrested, and the world shall thus be strife-free for the rest of human history.
Now we just need the final shot. Usually, these Toler era Chan films had a joke for Chan’s son at the very end; the final joke here belongs to Mantan Moreland, indicating the focus to come. So cue eyeballs bugged out towards the screen, like a Tex Avery character or that one jerk’s death in Friday the 13th Part 3-D.
Ugh! Seriously, that was wretched. It wasn’t particularly offensive, oh no, but among the regular series Chans, this is undoubtedly the single most boring – the worst critique one can ever lob at a movie. Even with Toler in place, this is an insult to whatever good things Chan stood for. The thing is, I am speaking here solely through fury and apathy (a curious combination). The Internet, all-knowing prophet of all, assures me things do again get better from here – though whether we’ll ever see the series’ heights again I seriously doubt.
I don’t know why I’m continuing with these things.
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. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (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. 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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