Monogram seesaws back to delivering what they’re capable of, as The Shanghai Cobra is just beneath The Chinese Cat in serving up 1940s exploitation silliness. I’ve resigned that the best is behind me in this already-mediocre franchise, but at least Monogram can occasionally alleviate the tedium ever so slightly.
The Shanghai Cobra opens on its best scene, the sort that I wish they could fill an entire movie out of, except…these B-movie series never seem intent upon delivering any more than the barest possible minimum value for your buck. If that, even.
Imagine, if you will, the perfect film noir setting. I’m talking the sense of grit, grime and gumshoes pervading the very celluloid (or streaming online video, in my case). For this one and only scene in the whole 47 movie Charlie Chan franchise, we are in a beautifully crapsack world of pounding rain, dames, trench-coated, soul-shattered dicks, and coffee shops. It’s like something James M. Cain would write and I love it for that. (Of course, nothing but Chans in my diet for two months has rather ruined my taste.) I am seriously digging on this hardboiled pot-boiling and coffee sipping!
There is a single very odd shot in this sequence. Suddenly we’re in what seems to be a movie theater, noir footage playing on a screen. Damn it, guys, was that incredible noirish goodness just a fake-out movie-within-a-movie?! There’s a lone woman in the audience, which seems about right for Charlie Chan. No matter, this shot ends, we’re back in Chandler-ville tracking our B-movie femme fatale, and I’m left to assume this one cutaway was just a bizarre fluke. Which ain’t too rare for Monogram, it seems, as I have not commented on the useless single-shot cutaways in previous Chans – to exploding ships, skeletons, or stock footage of WWII fighter planes.
Anyway, this confusion aside, it seems the noir still holds. Good! One palooka follows the dame out into the Kurosawa-esque rainstorm; then he simply dies, of plot convenience.
Inspector Harry Davis (Walter Fenner) says he is the third victim of the dreaded Cobra Killer, whose M.O. involves death-by-cobra. Seriously! I love these wildly exotic Monogram death schemes. Alas, it’s too good to be true; I was hoping for Chan versus a lone psychopathic madman, Scorpio-style (Dirty Harry put me in a mind for something better than Chan can deliver). Nope, not gonna happen! Another cutaway (the Monogram special) reveals Chan’s enemies this time are another cabal of bland thugs – cannot complain, though, ‘cause cabals are what made The Chinese Cat ever so slightly adequate. And the Cobra Cabal have actual motives beyond mere random snake violence – to rid the Sixth National Bank of its precious, precious WWII-era radium (and apparently also to torment Ralph Macchio).
Chan’s first act, upon arrival, is to relate a lengthy FLASHBACK to Shanghai, providing the audience with promiscuous red herringism concerning some guy named Van Horne. It’s really a double excuse for Monogram, to combine idle stock footage with several whole minutes of eaten screen time. (Those traditional 64 minutes per-entry aren’t gonna fill themselves.)
Chan’s second act is to visit the bank vault, and slowly meet who can be considered today’s suspects (all the cobra victims, by the way, have been bank employees). Like The Chinese Cat, The Shanghai Cobra is largely unconcerned with an overloaded suspect mystery, as defined the Fox Chans. Working in the same building is random chemist H.R. Jarvis (James Flavin). There is bank VP Bradford Harris (Arthur Loft) working under president Walter Fletcher (Roy Gordon). These are all unaccomplished B-movie actors, with resumes you’d not be interested in. There’s also bank secretary Paula Webb (Joan Barclay) – How’s that? Our inexplicable per-picture-Paul quota is being filled by a “Paula” (not the first time for that, really). I am still waiting for a Paul-less Chan.
Also in the bank are regular comic foils Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) and Tommy Chan (Benson Fong). Yeah, of course the only ethnics in Monogram’s cast are always the clowns. More than ever, these two have no impact on the plot or investigation, even as they kill plenty of screen time with their “comedy.” It eats up precious minutes, getting us to that magic 64, and that’s Monogram’s priority Number One for “Number Three Son.” (Birmingham is simply here this time, working for Chan without Chan’s approval, which doesn’t even try for a weak coincidental setup.)
Chan investigates the noir coffee shop that preceded the death-by-cobra, now stripped of its world-weary charm in the over-lit harshness of on-set Monogram day. As he questions, we’re suddenly back in that inexplicable movie theater from the opening, where that lone lady offers up Chan her advice. Oh my holy underwear, they’ve broken the fourth wall! Chan now has audience members helping him with his mysteries!...I wish. Of course that’s not the case – not in a series this literal minded. The in-film explanation is something far more bizarre…
She’s speaking from the jukebox. Um…er…how do I address this? That “movie theater” the woman is in is actually a DJ station, set up solely for the purpose of developing a playlist for Joe’s Coffee Shop. Was this common then? Did randomizing elements not exist in 1940s jukeboxes, so they had to hire 24-7 employees to staff giant theaters, one for each and every jukebox in our great nation?! Apparently, “yes,” for no one finds anything strange about this jukebox’s sudden sentience. Boy, jukeboxes see everything. It’s either one of Stephen King’s lesser short stories, or the ‘40s equivalent of spyware.
Sorry, the jukebox weirdifies me.
So Chan, at the freaking jukebox’s insistence, meets up with Ned Stewart (James Cardwell), a hardboiled gumshoe dick flattie. He hauls the hood to the hoosegow for a thorough hot lamp grilling from flatfoots. Ned explains he’s been hired to tail Paula. Events follow so that Paula acquits Ned of cobra-assisted homicide, and the two of them seem set to be this entry’s lovebirds (an old formula element that’s been rather thankfully absent for the past ten entries).
Tommy and Birmingham, meanwhile, have a sub-sub-sub-Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” routine concerning the word “u-turn.” You see, “U” sound like “you,” and Birmingham thinks Tommy, a lowly Chinaman, should speak in sing-song pidgin Engrish – just as Chan himself always does. And Birmingham, as a stereotyped ‘40s negro, is of course blindly submissive to anyone – Hence he’s told “No u-turn,” so he turns. Oh har har har…Still, Monogram’s managed to get us a little closer to that glorious, fabled 64th minute.
This bumbling duo of ethnic stereotypes then manages to monopolize Monograms monotonous movie more, as they opt to sneak into the sewers under the bank by means of a trap door in a laundry store. These sewers ought to be a chance for more neato noir imagery, as in the opening, but…naw, they shot their “cinematography wad” already, so it’s simply dark. Hence, no screen caps, in a section I’d’ve dearly liked to screen cap.
The end result of their rather uninvolving sewage-wading is the trademarked Second Murder. One of the bank’s security men has been cobra-bit and dumped in shit, via some secret bank passageway. Hence it’s up to Chan, with the aid of his lumbering sidekicks, to discover this route.
They start out seeking that trap door in the laundry store, but it ain’t there. Would you believe why? It’s not because the trap door’s been moved or hidden. The entire laundry store’s been moved, down one whole storefront overnight! Even if I could buy that, how is it both Tommy and Birmingham are so moronic as to not realize they’re walking into a different building?...Oh right, it’s Tommy and Birmingham!
So whatever, all that served was to kill running time. (It must be a fine art, moving whole Laundromats solely to reach that mightily distant 64 minute mark.) Now Chan’s in the sewer, like 15 minutes after when he should’ve gone down there (joining the franchise in its multi-entry feces bath). And here’s that ultra-secret passageway – a massive, bomb-blasted tunnel the size of a Smart Car (which is pretty big in sewer terms, actually).
Seeking answers to whatever the question has become at this point, Chan goes back to the police station, then back to the coffee shop, then back to the sewers, then back to the coffee shop again, then back to the bank, then – Damn this lack of sets!
Finally, time killed to Monogram’s satisfaction, Chan can find a new(ish) set – H.R. Jarvis’ chemistry labs, secretly located in the bank’s upper floors, unknown by anyone despite the 3,000 square feet they take up! Chan passes through another door, and finds himself – inside the jukebox movie theater! Whoa, man, like, you just asploded my head, man! Chan is in the jukebox!
It turns out this is no ordinary jukebox (no, really?). You see, the jukebox is the cobra! Or, more accurately, it’s a Bondian gadget that kills everyone who uses the coin return – Or at least, when the DJ deems customer murder pertinent. So, what, is there a cobra living inside the jukebox? Maybe my Stephen King analogy wasn’t too far off. Actually, no, the jukebox has simply been outfitted with heaping gallon jugs full of extracted cobra venom – Okay, then, that’s far more normal! (Okay, this stuff is dumb as hell, but this is what I appreciate in the Mono-Chans.)
Well, that pretty much wraps everything up into a nice, neat little – We got 15 minutes ‘til 64? Damn! Oh well, let’s…let’s say that cabal of cobra-killing crooks is still on the loose, why not, still intent upon somehow using their ridiculous snake M.O. to steal radium from a bank vault. (It sounds even weirder here.) Chan knows what to do, when all else fails – Set a trap for the baddies. Hell, he’s probably only solved like five mysteries without employing the quantum observer effect.
The newspapers crow, whilst spinning directly towards my head, that the bank shall be moving it’s radium tomorrow! Ye gods, that’s surely not a trap to lure brainless mugs in. So obviously the cabal shall bite, like the proverbial cobra, and rob the bank vaunt tonight with rockets. I sorta like how Monogram has refashioned Chan as something approaching an action movie, ‘40s-style, because this means the climaxes at least approach vague excitement (suspense ceased working for Chan ten movies ago).
Vault exploded! Tommy trapped! Birmingham also trapped! In a cave-in! Oh, and Chan too! Bombs are hurled! (Padding inserted concerning girls sitting at the radio for no reason.) The police arrive! A shootout in the sewers! Chan is rescued! There shall be no Chanquest!
Whew!, that was fun. But there will be a damn Chanquest after all, ‘cause there’s like 4 minutes still to go (you mean you couldn’t drag that “u-turn” gag out another 4 minutes?). Okay, whatever, here’s all the suspects in the police station. Of course there’s always a final mastermind who needs to be Chanquested out, which always feels tacked-on in these cabal episodes. And the killer is…is…I honestly don’t recognize the fat old man. Let’s say it’s Harris. Sure, that’s a name I mentioned above. And the proof Chan needs is the mass of cobra poison Harris has in his pockets. Moron!
Oh no, one minute left! Well, who says we can’t milk the “u-turn” gag a little more?
And that’s The Shanghai Cobra. It’s silly, and stupid, and 10% entertaining, which is 10% more than most of Monogram’s output has been so far, so…Grading on a highly weighted scale, it’s not too bad. And that opening scene is truly astounding.
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. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• 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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