Well, here I am, stupidly hungover from my “No Pauls!” celebration in response to the last awful Charlie Chan picture (The Red Dragon), forced to somehow exist my way through another stultifying Mono-Chan – The Scarlet Clue.
Oh my head…
[Sweet Advil dulls the pain.]
I’m all better now!
On to Chan! And whatever happened to you, Charlie? I mean, your movies were never great, but they at least once knew what they were trying to do. Under Monogram (the monotone, monotonous, monstrous Chan monopoly), and through sheer repetition some three dozen times, Chan has lost an understanding of why formula elements were put in place to begin with. It barely works any more. It’s not even a seventh rate photocopy; it’s the ghostly image you see when you turn out the lights, the imprint a picture leaves on the wall after years of sun damage, the frozen screenshot of gay porn that ends up on your television when you take a vacation.
Most simply, the Chan movies are no longer mysteries, though they dutifully follow that groove that was set for them 18 years hence. They’re barely action movies, most of the time, and they don’t have plots that cohere. They’re somewhat comedies now, not in the campy, self-mocking way many franchises happen upon, but in a screaming, lame, ‘40s way.
Charlie Chan, I hate you.
Without my notes, I cannot even recall the opening murder. Looking back now, I realize why: it has nothing to do with the movie to follow. It occurs on a fog-shrouded ship, I think (too dark to tell), involves…er, men…I think, and Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is there. So is Captain Flynn (Robert E. Homans, which almost sounds like a Latinate name for my species), though I don’t think he’ll be around for any more of this. He’s not the one killed, mind you (that’s just some guy), but I think this was just some context-free Chan scene they had to smash into some entry.
But a car was seen near the ship, and a car is apparently still a big deal in 1945, since this lone clue turns out to be correct – all our suspects, killers, etc. are all ensconced in the radio tower the car came from. So it’s off to our novelty setting of the day, a television studio (hey, this was unusual in 1945, and hey, TV might not last that long!).
I’ve complained about Monogram’s lack of varied sets before, but this takes the cake. There is one set for The Scarlet Clue, redressed for each scene as a new location. It’s hell trying to figure it all out, as I’m never sure where we’re supposed to be – even worse than usual, that is. There are ways to mask, or even take advantage of, a low budget, but the studio-bound Poverty Row pics of the ‘40s sure hadn’t figured that out.
Tommy Chan (Benson Fong) and Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) are here too, though I no longer question that fact, nor do I even pay attention to these guys. The series’ offhand racism, easily seen in that picture above, is put into sharp relief in this entry, seeing as it’s distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated. Anglo! But still, the essential “grotesque racism” angle of the Chan series has itself been diluted over time, like all the formula – The Fox movies genuinely meant their anti-ethnic stance; Monogram simply does it ‘cause it’s what you did in 1945.
Among my various complaints of the Mono-Chans, it seems they can only get one element right per entry. This entry manages to introduce the suspect roster in a coherent fashion, so I can actually tell everyone apart. It helps when you write dialogue for your cast, not just a plot synopsis.
Hulda Swenson (Victoria Faust) is a grotesque Swedish caricature, and at least that’s white folk they’re badmouthing. She plays the same role as Roz in Monsters, Inc., which means the final minutes will reveal her as a secret agent.
Mrs. Marsh (Virginia Brissac – a beautiful starlet in 1913, meaning she’s now playing hideous harpy-like spinster harridans) is the psychotic witch who oversees the radio program cast – the rest of our cast.
William Rand (Jack Norton) is simply there to fill out space.
Diane Hall (Helen Deverall, listed in the credits as “Helen Deveraux” for some inscrutable reason) is the owner of that all-important car. She’s also attractive, but she has no romantic interest, so she’ll serve no further purpose. Do I actually miss the lovebird couplings now?!
Diane’s friend is Gloria Bayne (Janet Shaw). She doesn’t have much personality, which means she’ll be the next to die. (In a series crawling with anti-black sentiment, it’s amazing how, against more modern clichés, they are never among those murdered.)
Ah, it clears my head to present our cast in so orderly a manner. And here is the chief guest star of the evening, if the size of his font in the opening credits is any indication – Ben Carter, apparently playing himself. Now, at last I can see why they cast Mantan Moreland as Birmingham, ‘cause here is his former comic costar, together for a brief comic routine which is unquestionably the highlight of the Monogram era to date. It’s Mantan’s famous (at the time) “interrupted sentence” routine, a spoof of ordinary speech patterns. “Well, have you –” “Yes, I’ve given up smoking.” For several minutes, and it never gets old. What’s great is it’s humor for black audiences by black audiences – putting in sharp relief what the white filmmakers have Mantan do the rest of the time. And for these few minutes, Carter gets equal billing with Mantan (and Benson).
Here’s something else I cannot help but love – 1940s mad science. Ah, giant brass balls of electrical nodes, firing off lightning bolts willy-nilly. It’s the perfect period signifier. It’s also where most of Monogram’s budget for 1945 went to, I’d hazard.
The “plot” reason for these electrical doodads, as if you needed a reason for such things, is radar. It’s clear the movie expects most audiences don’t know what that is, so we get plenty of exposition. Basically, it seems The Scarlet Clue equates radar with radio with TV with poisoning you with radio-controlled cigarettes somehow. Yup, that’s the “exotic” murder method this time, which is even more complicated than I’ve let on – it required perfect location, timing, and a precise combination of nicotine. Some of Monogram’s novelty deaths, like “cobra in the jukebox,” are fun; this one is less successful.
And it’s by this method that Gloria dies.
We suspect someone already, in that cabal sorta way. It’s Gloria’s boss, Brett (I. Stanford Jolley, B-movie western villain), an actual mustache-twirling member of the evil, evil British Secret Service – Wait! The British were our enemies in 1945?! I’m confused.
Whatever. Brett has a unique means of speaking with his secret higher-ups. He calls them on the telephone! Stay with me, it is unique. See, Brett speaks into the phone, and a nearby typewriter prints out his master’s response, like some old-timey fax machine. Later evidence reveals an over-complicated relay system, with the ultimate secret villain mastermind at the very top.
Crime Lab™! It’s amazing, these Chans all ostensibly take place in different cities (the head police character is different each time), yet it’s the same Crime Lab™ each time. And I’ve finally realized what Crime Lab™ reminds me of – its satirical equivalent in The Naked Gun, and the “Police Squad” TV show which preceded it. Which was pretty much a spoof of old Monogram procedurals anyway.
Chan’s investigation, relatively fruitless per usual at halfway point, is getting a little too close to Brett. That marks him as the killer’s next victim – not by radio-controlled poison capsule that is triggered by cigarettes and flowers, no, but by the elevator. Brett’s typewriter summons him to the elevator. Then our black-gloved, mask wearing killer (giallo!) pulls a switch. A floor opens up underneath Brett, and –
Ah hah – hah HAH!!!
Okay, I need to stop guffawing ridiculously at the violent deaths (and adding cartoon sound effects to the screen shots).
The time (the 40th minute) has come for that new Monogram formula element – Tommy and Birmingham’s aimless, fruitless searching. This they do in that mad science laboratory (you got a place like that, you use it), eventually blundering into a room where it snows indoors. The apparent justification is that it’s for experiments on radio waves and cold. Okay, guys! It serves little purpose in-movie, so I can only hypothesize the Monogram scriptwriters had just discovered goofballs. And here, buried in the snow, is Brett’s dead body.
Crime Lab™, in their wisdom, successfully IDs Brett’s means of death. He wasn’t poisoned – Wait, we thought he was?! When did that happen? No, Crime Lab™ informs us Brett died by falling – Oh well thank you, then!
Chan himself soon discovers just how Brett died by falling when that sneaky killer lures him and his two shiftless assistants into the Elevator of Death. Under the eternal aura of Plot Protection, Chan proposes he and son Tommy walk upstairs (just in case the killer is randomly on the stairs). Hence it is only Birmingham who has the floor drop out beneath him – and yet he survives, through a combination of luck and Wile E. Coyote physics. Series regular or no, how many genre films do you know that would neglect murdering their black characters in such a way?
Over at the television studio, some guy we haven’t met before performs a lame, drunken Charlie Chaplin routine. He smokes a cigarette, smells the flowers, goes through the entire specific pre-death ceremony, then dies – of poisoning. I don’t even know why this guy was killed off, but here’s the rub – Fourth murder! Only the stupidest (or Biggersest) Chan movies are that deadly!
The climax is coming up, and a token Chanquest is presented and then tossed aside, this formula element having worn off its final usefulness. In Monogram, it ought to be replaced with an action sequence, except what we get (a minutes-long series of muffled gunshots in almost complete darkness) barely works. Anyway, here’s our killer, clad exactly like a slasher villain:
Through events that are too dark to parse out, the killer tumbles down that same elevator shaft. Fifth death (equaling Halloween)! It’s the television station – of blood! Moving to the basement, the police are all set for the great “Scooby Doo” unmasking when…Chan says it matters not, for he knows who the killer is – Mrs. Marsh, the bitch. He never explains how he knows this, but apparently Chan’s known she was the killer like three killings ago. There you go, ethicists, Charlie Chan is indirectly responsible for another several human deaths, ‘cause once again he couldn’t bring himself to make an arrest before formula dictated it. Chan, you are a horrible person!
While Charlie Chan has always been somewhat omniscient (as the plot demands), at least in the past he would offer technobabble explaining how he’d worked such stuff out. Now, though, he simply knows – I joked about this in the Fox era, but they’ve now literalized my exaggerations, and what a horror show it is. The filmmakers truly and deeply don’t care, which is interesting, because they stopped caring around the same time I did. But while I’m just wishing beyond hope to make the remaining eleven Chans as painless as possible, the good hacks at Monogram wish to stretch this thing out as long as they can for purely financial reasons. God damn them all to Hell with cherries on top! Chan gives me gas!
And this movie had no Pauls in it either!
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. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (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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