It sure took those Monogram mofos long enough to decide upon a new Charlie Chan, following star Sidney Toler’s violation of contract by way of death. I mean, it took ‘em a full three-quarters of a year! They could’ve made three whole Charlie Chan movies in that time! The latest obvious Caucasian the Mono majors happened upon to portray their increasingly-anachronistic Asian detective was career-challenged actor Roland Winters. In Roland we have the youngest actor to ever play Chan, at the juvenile age of forty-four. Hell, he’s younger even than Keye Luke, who would make his delayed, triumphant return as Chan’s son in one of Winters’ later films.
Here we have, even on one film’s evidence, a rather underwhelming non-thespian, doing an impersonation of Sidney Toler’s impersonation of Warner Oland’s racist parody of the Chinese. It doesn’t help that Roland has the whitest face of any Chan, and his attempt at Chan’s traditional halting English comes across more as a French accent than anything else. Really, it’s like a bad version of Claude Rains in Casablanca.
The artistic failure of Roland’s performance, coupled with the already-impoverished creativity of the Mono-Chans, coupled with unrelated company troubles…well, all this coupled to make Roland’s six-film run the absolute final chapter in the 47-film Charlie Chan saga. It’s amazing. They found the lowest note possible to bow on out.
The only film I can find from Roland’s tenure is his first, The Chinese Ring. It is mostly of a piece with the recent Monogram bores; indeed, Roland’s presence is the only unique element, the rest of Chan’s regular cast as present as ever (those being, at this point, Mantan Moreland as chauffeur and Chanservant Birmingham Brown, and Victor Sen Yung as…as…). Here I have to break off the parenthetical to address Yung. He had been reprising his old Fox role as “No. 2 Son” Jimmy, only now he’s playing…“No. 2 Son” Tommy. Even though “Tommy” previously had been the “No. 3 Son,” and was played by Benson Fong. Name aside, this Tommy is really Jimmy. It was apparently just Monogram’s illogical effort to avoid continuity “confusion,” as relates back to the lead actor switch. Really, they should have done as before, and gone to a new “No. 5 Son” (“No. 4” having previously been used). This is indicative of Monogram’s overall regard to film quality.
What’s interesting about Roland Winters (it sure ain’t his performance) is how his skills necessitate a new kind of Chan. Simply put, this is a Chan where Chan himself is functional (or as much so as Monogram can muster), and not struggling to remain alive through the present take. So the focus is back on Chan, with a reduction of screen time for Mantan. Jimmy – er, sorry, Tommy – has essentially nothing to do whatsoever, and a concurrent drop in screen time.
Let’s plow through this, and put an end to Chan once and for all! A Chinese princess of all things, Mei Ling, pays Charlie Chan a visit at his new home in San Francisco (his 14-strong brood in Honolulu apparently long ago abandoned to the elements). She says as few lines as Monogram was willing to pay for, then just drops dead. Of what, I’m at a loss to say, because things just happen now. But she’s helpfully sketched out the designated one-per-entry clue: “CAPT K.” What is that, a 1980s corporate superhero mascot for Konami?
It turns out the murdered Princess (this movie killed a princess) was (in)conveniently friends with two Captains K: Captain Kong (something else which reminds me of the 8-bit era) and Captain Kelso (um…“That '70s Show” now). I’d’ve just scrawled out the man’s name instead, in this scenario, and eschewed the life-wasting “Captain” thing entirely.
Chan’s so-called investigation leads him to a meeting with the barrel-lugging Kong (I’m serious – the man oversees a freighter full of barrels). It’s not until halfway through that Chan the genius is able to parse out Kelso’s existence…long after the audience has figured it out. Yeah, Chan’s pretty inconsequential in this thing. And (spoiler), the Captains K are indeed ko-konspirators. The obvious villains are the villains! So much for trick endings (even in the light of a “trick ending” with a third nogoodnik).
The Kaptain K konnection yet to kome, Chan idles away screen time at the Princess’ seedy Chinatown apartment – Just what sort of a princess was this?! He Chan-chats the landlady about the Princess’ movements – her whereabouts, that is. This leads to scenes I don’t intend to recap which reveal the “motive” today koncerns bank fraud. After Dangerous Money’s thrilling currency fraud motivations, no less!
Time having passed, and Kelso having been Chan-chatted, Chan returns to the apartment (limited sets), for a lengthy kreeping scene. This klimaxes with the unkovery of a korpse – the landlady. This was all to be expected. Then Chan heads to the rooftop, as the filmmakers toss another death our way – the brutal, violent death of a mute eight-year-old. Fun times! (All the victims in this movie have been Chinese, which somehow excuses the filmmakers from child murder, at least in 1940s terms.)
Charlie Chan just flat out isn’t going to solve the mystery this time, as he is apparently plagued with as much ennui regarding his own franchise as I am. The Kaptains konsent, though, by setting up a devious ambush for Chan. They call him on the phone and request a meeting, then take him hostage with a pistol. The Chan of even a few years ago would’ve easily sniffed out this ploy, but Roland’s ineffectual yellowface routine cannot. Either that, or he’s thoroughly genre aware, trusting he’ll come out okay regardless.
The Kaptains bind Chan, with intent of drowning, as he is hauled out to Kong’s kargo kraft. The only reason, and I mean only reason Chan is eventually saved is because koincidentally the kops have followed his trail – for reasons having nothing to do with the “mystery,” mind you. Just because. (It’s In the Script, other websites would say.) And when the kops korner the Kaptains, they resolve the plot in a decidedly period way: punching. I imagine most of Monogram’s output is phenomenally punch-happy, in a way the Chans never were, and The Chinese Ring seems to be a part of that philosophy. You could make a drinking game of it. It’s not exactly “action,” even in the Monogram sense of the matter, but apparently the sort of cheap, repeatable thrill 1940s exploitation could be built on – Scene can’t end? Punch a character in the face! Hell, even the women get punched!
Kaptains kaptured, the movie now just has to go out on a joke. And since WWII is over, the world’s ethnics well subdued, Monogram happens upon the new post-war enemy all right-thinking Americans should rally against: women. I’m serious, I’m almost sad to miss out on the burgeoning sexism The Trap parlayed to such extremes. And so Chan’s final aphorism is a supposedly humorous comment meant to disparage an entire gender: “A woman not made for heavy thinking, but should decorate scene like delicate plum.” And I do love how the series manages to fade from my life in a moment that is simultaneously anti-woman and anti-Chinese (and possibly anti-black too).
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That’s the end for me, but Roland would do five more Chan movies before the series’ lengthy death spasms would take it to the grave. Unable to waste another week of my live viewing these terminal wrecks, I am limited to doing research…
Docks of New Orleans (1948) – Charlie Chan takes his particular brand of ineffectual sleuthing to New Orleans, where a businessman named Lafontanne (all businessmen in New Orleans are so named) seeks Chan’s help, fearing for his own life. What Lafontanne doesn’t know is that Chan is of no use until you are already dead. And with the poor man murdered, Chan uncovers a chemical-stealing gang which is improbably killing people through a peculiar combination of radio signals, glass beakers, and mass-broadcasts of opera arias. It sounds equal parts The Scarlet Clue and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
Shanghai Chest (1948) – A San Francisco judge is stabbed to death via stabbing. The blade’s fingerprints belong to a man long-dead, executed at the judge’s Texas-like behest. More deaths proceed to occur surrounding the sentenced man’s trial – in alphabetical order. How’s that? Another anal retentive San Francisco serial killer Charlie Chan movie to inspire the real life Zodiac Killer, along with Charlie Chan at Treasure Island! In the end, it is the dead man’s twin who’s doing the killing, because we all know twins have the exact same fingerprints.
The Golden Eye (1948) – Charlie Chan battles a Russian crime head who intends to use a space-based satellite to stage an attack on London. Oh wait…
In actuality, it’s closer to Goldfinger…with a bit of A View to a Kill, which was just a Goldfinger rip-off anyway. Basically, gold-smuggling gold-smugglers are smuggling gold in a devious gold smuggling operation. The precise same plot convolutions as usual apply.
The Feathered Serpent (1948) – In the Chan equivalent of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung appear in the same film as Chan’s sons. Mantan Moreland is in there too. I can only assume about five minutes of screen time were reserved somewhere for Roland.
As for the plot, it – Whoa! Chan et al are involved in an archeological expedition through Mexico’s Predator-ridden jungles in search of Aztec treasure (and missing archeologists)! With all the awesome ancient curses and bamboo booby traps later co-opted wholesale by the Indiana Jones movies! Apparently, somewhere in all this they are able to squeeze in the standard murder investigation we don’t give two Chan shits about.
The Sky Dragon (1948) – The final Chan film sees Luke return, but not Yung. Things start promisingly, with all the crew and passengers on an airliner passing out from spiked coffee – save for Chan and his son. But what might’ve been Airplane!, only racist, instead turns into, well…Charlie Chan. That is, stultifying investigations on land, with things only becoming interesting again towards the end as Chan performs his usual climatic Chanquest – aboard another crippled airliner. ‘Cause you gotta replicate the initial murder conditions perfectly!
And that was it for the franchise, though it was not Monogram’s intention to end Chan’s run here. In 1949, Winters and Luke went to England, where Monogram had funds tied up, with the intent that the series would continue production in Europe. Franchise death came in the form of British currency devaluation – Monogram momentum now monetarily mummified. Chan took a pounding, so to speak. Artistically, the series had been a zombie for a great many years. It was a purely financial endeavor, and thus to die financially makes perfect sense.
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One could say Chan’s cinematic potential was gone due to television – this was surely the official statement lobbied about by Monogram at the time. Thus it makes sense that someone would foolishly decide to resuscitate the Chan character as a TV series (totally unconnected to the preceding films). Enter yet another undignified white man, J. Carrol Naish, to play Chan in 1956’s poorly-rated “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.” Even while the medium may have been the place for Chan, the times surely weren’t. There was just nothing pertinent or contemporary that could be done then. History had passed Charlie Chan by.
Chan still makes the occasional pop cultural reappearance, each attempt a predestined failure. Take for instance his next filmed flop, Hanna-Barbera’s 1972 animated series, “The Amazing Charlie Chan and the Chan Clan.” For the first time ever, an American “Chan” production used a Chinese actor to portray the Chan man – Keye Luke himself. But the focus was no longer on the obese Oriental, but on Chan’s ten children (and their dog Chu Chu), who traveled the world solving mysteries – while also playing in a rock band. It was just like every other Hanna-Barbera cartoon ever produced, with special note being made of “Scooby Doo.” I mean, “Scooby” scrupulously employed the constricting formula pioneered by the cinematic Chan. And Hanna-Barbera, ever the prolific producer of animated atrocities, could only eke sixteen episodes out of this premise. They oughtn’t to have tried.
Then in 1980, Jerry Shylock (who?) proposed a multi-million dollar comedy to star Chan, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Lady. The times now weren’t merely apathetic towards Chan, but outright hostile. Rabble-rousers C.A.N. (Coalition of Asians to Nix) opposed the production for its obvious racist issues (not to mention Peter Ustinov, yet another cracker, was to play Chan long, long, long after this stupid yellowface routine ought to have bit the dust). No matter, the re-titled Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen came out in 1981, and was an “abysmal failure.” Meaning it fits right in with the old series.
One year later say the equally unimpressive spoof, Charlie Chan is Missing (link not found). I’m not sure who in 1982 would have cared.
Nothing more has come of the property since then. Miramax obtained the film rights (for surely way too much money), with intent to create an edgy and radical Chan for the ‘90s. (Pardon my ridiculous guffawing.) Chan was to be “hip, slim, cerebral, sexy and…a martial-arts master.” In other words, nothing like he’s ever been before. Of course, knowing how studios pre-talk their properties, had this actually happened, it would’ve sucked.
Lucy Liu is presently struggling to force another Charlie Chan reboot out of the development hell it is rightly mired in. I honestly doubt remotely anything will come of this. I mean, why re-imagine the Chan character now, when the only thing anyone knows of him is the unfortunate implications? There’s just not enough positive name recognition for the sort of reboot treatment recently given to Sherlock Holmes…via Sherlock Holmes.
Of course, none of what came after The Sky Dragon is in any way a part of the franchise our focus has been on. That series, which passed from Fox on to Monogram and saw a staggering 47 entries, had been dead and buried since 1948. Any necessary connections, via actor, writer, director or studio are irreparably severed now. And since Chan has his origin in literature, anything to come has its inspiration due to Earl Derr Biggers. Yes, the Charlie Chan franchise is irreparably done with, and even new Chan films (ha!) couldn’t undo that.
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I’m done with Chan for good! WHOOOOOOO!!!!!
Let the drunkenness begin! (I don’t care if it’s a Tuesday morning.)
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. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
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