In my temporary Chan outage, I have amazingly only skipped over one entry due to immediate unavailability – Number 39, 1946’s Shadows over Chinatown. A little research reveals what I’ve missed out on – torsos! That’s the lovely, Black Dahlia-inspired poetry Monogram would have offered me – armless, legless, headless torsos.
There is another surprise I missed out on, but that surprise is present in today’s Dangerous Money, so I’ll save it for now. I’ll just say this: with a robust 347 votes on the IMDb, Shadows over Chinatown enjoys a surprisingly high score – for a Monogram Chan, at least. It’s not great overall, oh no!
Now, Dangerous Money? Isn’t that a highly questionable financial program on CNBC? No, it’s Sidney Toler’s tenth film as Charlie Chan under Monogram, and his twenty-first overall. He’ll only do one more after this.
And, nearing the absolute end of my Charlie Chan odyssey, there is absolutely nothing new in Dangerous Money I have not seen before, even when limited to the Monogram era. Okay, it is the only Mono-Chan to take place on a cruise ship…which means it’s still the 10th or so Chan overall to use this setting. Considering the traditional Monogram drop in quality, this doesn’t augur well. In fact, again I think they’ve managed to churn out the most generic Chan possible, plot-wise. It’s a mystery, but without clues or logic or a reason one scene follows another, with way too many suspects and a tad of Monogram craziness thrown in at the end. For what it’s worth, the story concerns something like currency smuggling and the U.S. Treasury, for what difference it makes – none, though it does influence the title. And the latter third of the movie takes place in a cabana.
Okay, I’ll let out the movie’s big surprise: Victor Sen Yung is back! He made his Chan debut at the same time Sidney Toler, as “No. 2 Son” Jimmy Chan in Fox’s Charlie Chan in Honolulu. Yung’s performances were always superior to his follow-up Tommy, played by Benson Fong (of course, no one holds a candle to Keye Luke). But Benson was gone now, taking a break to start an L.A.-based restaurant chain, Ah Fong’s. And with cancer slowly eating away at Toler (though he does locomote himself in this entry), Monogram needed a far sprightlier actor to carry his sagging body and career. It is something of a relief to see Yung back.
On the other hand, Mantan Moreland is sitting this one out as well, meaning he is (temporarily) replaced again by Chan’s secondary stereotypical black chauffeur, Chattanooga Brown (Willie Best, of The Red Dragon).
Now, this is all that is interesting about Dangerous Money. Everything else on display has happened about 39 times throughout the franchise, and the cast is mostly mediocre at best. The one exception to that is starlet Gloria Warren as Rona Simmonds – in one of her only roles ever (a common fate for actors in Chan features). I’m not saying her performance is good, not particularly; however, Gloria Warren is damnably attractive, in a Julia Adams sorta way. You know, the actress who essentially popularized the bikini? Grasping at straws (and starlets), that’s what I’m doin’!
With nothing else to relate, and the plot not worth a church mouse’s fart, I’ll simply run through the physical events on screen, to see whatever that reveals. Anything remotely exciting will be italicized. I’ll be honest: I sorta stopped paying attention to the dialogue shortly into this beast.
A couple walks down a ship’s deck. Then a man walks down, in a way better described as creeping. Then Charlie Chan does likewise, with a particular, cancer-ridden gait. He stands next to a different man motionlessly for several minutes. Then they both avoid a tumbling winch that destroys a railing. Then it’s back to standing around.
Chan and the man go inside, where a magician alternates between standing motionlessly and throwing prop knives at his buxom assistant. Jimmy and Chattanooga walk outside on the deck. Inside, the entire cast either stands or sits, all still. Then a knife strikes the man’s back and he dies. Everybody now opts to stand still around the vicinity of the man for about five minutes, minor shuffling back and forth. Affording camera changes, one man is still seated.
Chan and another man walk out to the deck for a bit, then walk back in. Everybody stands in the same place for a while longer. Then everybody walks out except for Chan and the man. Fade out…Fade in, Chan and the man standing precisely where they were before, but now in a different room. They stay there for a while.
Jimmy and Chattanooga alternately walk and sit in their cabin, Chattanooga’s face covered in hideously fake polka dots – it is either a stupid idea of his own, or bad Monogram makeup. A man walks in, bends over to put his face near Chattanooga’s, Jimmy gives him a glass, and the man drops it. He walks out, and Jimmy sits beside Chattanooga, who has not moved.
Chan is in his cabin, standing beside a man and a woman. Several minutes of this occurs.
Chan walks into Jimmy’s cabin, where he and Chattanooga remain as they were. (As a side note as to content, this dippy duo has given themselves code names, “Chop Suey” for the Asian one, and “Pork Chop” for the black one. No, it’s not racist, why do you ask?)
Chattanooga somehow falls through the floorboards into the kitchen, where he stands up beside another black man for a while. They move around a lot more than all the other actors.
Every character is on the deck, it is daylight, and every character is sitting.
Chan sits in a chair in his cabin, nearby on their feet are Jimmy and Chattanooga. In a cutaway, Chattanooga’s legs shake most vigorously. They walk out, confusing edits happen, the lights turn out, a knife hurls into a Charlie Chan dummy, the lights come back on, and Chan walks out of a corner to dismantle his dummy as his assistants return.
Chan stands in a hallway with a man.
All the characters dance slowly. (Even Chan dances, with the same relative speed as a slow motion “Baywatch” beach run – and this isn’t under-cranked.) The dancing goes on for several minutes, to the point where I actually grow concerned this image will get burned into my TV screen.
Three humans stand together on the deck.
Chan stands in the same hallway with the same man.
Classic Monogram creeping scene. That is, all the characters alternately walk through every ship set available, edited to convince me they are all following each other. It is very confusing. (Then some noises happen off screen, and dialogue I listened to indicates a man jumped overboard. I would have liked to have seen that.)
A stock footage ship pulls into an island. Yes, this earns italicization.
Chan stands in the same hallway with the same man. I am now just copying and pasting.
Chattanooga walks into a new set, the crew’s cabin, in a walk I’d imagine the official script referred to as a “creep” – to distinguish it from other ‘40s walks such as the “lurk” and the “stalk” and the “goose step.” The other black man sleeps as Chattanooga examines the bunk below him. The man wakes up as Chattanooga hides under the sheets. No points for guessing any scene involving black people and bed sheets in the 1940s ends with a ghost joke.
The ship’s stock footage plays again.
All the humans are seated around tables in our new set, the cabana. (I’ll admit it – the sets from here on out are on their own interesting, even when I realize the “jungle” is no more expansive than my apartment.) A woman walks across the room, showing a couple to a table. At another table, Charlie Chan is with the man. Then a different woman goes to the bar, sits there for a while, stands up, walks out, then three men walk out, then Chan and the man walk out. Think this is boring to read? That’s what it was like watching this thing!
In the jungle, one woman stands beside one man. Then the woman leaves as Chan and his man arrive to see the man. Chan and the two men go inside a cabana which is not the big cabana we saw but a different cabana. The irregular man sits down, as Chan and the normal man remain standing. Nobody moves noticeably for a great many minutes. Then a knife kills the irregular man. The other two walk outside very casually.
A man and a woman and Charlie Chan stand still in a new location.
An extraordinarily skinny Polynesian extra dances for 3 seconds. A woman sits Chan at a table, here in the big cabana, where other people are also engaged in the activity of being motionless and seated calmly.
Jimmy and Chattanooga, whose mere presence now indicates something interesting, either creep or lurk through a dark third cabana. Immobile stuffed animals frighten Chattanooga because he is ethnic.
Cabana. A man sits next to Chan. Another man enters the building, sits at the bar, remains present, then a woman stands up beside him, walks around for a bit, sits down, and Chan stands up and walks outside. Trust me, the dialogue here isn’t worth noting.
Three separate humans do the Monogram creep through the jungle. A knife kills one of them. The other two humans reach the first former human’s position, a perfect place for standing.
Half of the cast walks inside the third cabana. A turtle walks more speedily than most of the actors with a flashlight perched on its shell. (That moment is never explained – I do not understand it.) All these people hide behind various props. Chattanooga sneezes. The other half of the cast enters, guns fire for 1 second, everyone resumes standing in carefully arranged positions. Then Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for all I can tell, enter with a single pistol, and the whole cast of twelve surrenders. Something unclear happens, the Rosenbergs go outside, Chan shuffles listlessly after them, sits on the floor near a doorway, Ethel misses his motionless corpulent body repeatedly with a knife-shooting gun, then Chan walks up to her as slowly as a segway and they are defeated by Charlie Chan’s mere proximity. It turns out Ethel Rosenberg is a cross-dresser! Everybody walks away.
Distributed by Monogram Pictures!
Really, do I have to add anything more to that?! At least it’s more exciting than Twilight.
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. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)
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