This is a Charlie Chan film featuring Sidney Toler which I watched last week, and it may be in the running for the worst Charlie Chan film ever made. (I can't say definitely because I have never watched all of them.) The film was later retitled Murder at Midnight
Sidney Toler is execrable in the role of the famed Honolulu detective. Mantan Moreland bugs his eyes out as he does his stereotypical stick. Joseph Crehan and Ralph Peters play the bumbling police officers.
In addition to Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Browm, Chan's assistant here is played by 18-year-old Frances Chan, whose character is coincidently named Frances Chan. The actress was a model and this was her first and only major role in films. Her other two roles was as "Youngest Chan Daughter" eleven years earlier in Charlie Chan's Greatest Case, and as "Chinese Girl Prisoner" in 1945's Samarai. She married and retired from films in 1945; judging from her acting chops in Black Magic, this was probably a good thing.
A phony psychic is shot dead at a seance by a "nonexistent" bullet. One suspect at the seance is Charlie's daughter, forcing Charlie to take on the case. The acting ranges from terrible to adequate. The set design is cheap, flimsy, and unbelievable. The costuming is atrocious. The plot is helter-skelter, jumping around without rhyme or reason and avoiding mentioning important things. The plot (what there is of it) does, however, rely on some imaginary scientific things that just don't exist. The writing is so hurried that at least one suspect on the scene is completely ignored because they just didn't have time to explain who she was, what she was doing there, and what her motive could have been. All other motives given were paper thin. The actual motive (and the clue to solving the case) is not mentioned or hinted until the murderer is caught. In fact, there is no detection in this mystery at all.
It's hard to find a single moment in the one hour four minute run time that is not a mess. You can blame the director, Phil Rosen, or you can blame the writer, George Callahan, or you can blame the studio, Monogram Pictures, for carrying on the Charlie Chan franchise way beyond its shelf date. But blame is not the proper attitude to take here. Pity is.
Judge for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF0Lf6kp_Y
I think you've saved me the expense of effort, Jerry. I am mildly curious about Frances Chan, but even as a kid I never spent much time watching Chan or Monogram films...they tended to be dull, even when ludicrous.
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