Shadows Over Chinatown (1946)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Murky and forgettable, "Shadows Over Chinatown" gives the impression that the people involved in it weren't really putting in their hardest effort to make this into a good Charlie Chan movie. The cast and the mystery are fourth-rate; Mantan Moreland puts on a funny disguise at one point, and if Moreland's comic relief is the best thing about a Charlie Chan mystery, something has gone wrong. *1/2 out of 4.

Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan(Sidney Toler)along with #2 son Jimmy(Victor Sen Young)and assistant Birmingham(Mantan Moreland)are taking a bus ride to San Francisco, where the honorable Chan will work on the recent "headless torso" murders. One of the bus passengers is an elderly woman, Mrs. Conover(Mary Gordon), who would like Charlie to look into the disappearance of her granddaughter Mary(Tanis Chandler). Chan will turn up information that a group is defrauding insurance companies with the "torso" murders; and Mary Conover, who has been working as a waitress and formerly at an escort bureau, is in hiding in fear of her former boss. An A.W.O.L. Marine Corporal, an appendectomy scar and Chinatown...how do these things fit into this low-budget Monogram feature? Other players: Bruce Kellogg, Paul Bryar, George Eldredge and John Gallaudet.

This CHAN entry is a little different from the opening. First, there is a sequence in the Missing Persons Bureau with an off-screen narrator explaining the goings on. Then the "torso killings"--shades of the Black Dahlia. I don't recall such gruesome deaths in the earlier Chans, although here they are only spoken of. The plot is pure Monogram Chan for better or worse(a scorecard would come in handy with this outing as well as most of the others). The interaction between Toler, Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland is as always fun to watch. Much has been made of Moreland's parts in these films and their supposed "racist" overtones. Maybe so, but IMNTBHO him playing a scared bumbler is no different than Lou Costello playing a scared bumbler in one of the A&C flicks---and they are both super at it. If all else fails there is beautiful Tanis Chandler to ogle! Why she never became a true star is beyond me--she's a sight.

Another waste of a great title for a Chan film. It starts out with Chan (Sidney Toler), his son, (Sen Yung, who returned to the series with this film), and chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) travelling to San Francisco by bus. (If Chan has a chauffeur, why are they riding by bus?)The plot involves the Missing Persons Bureau and dismembered torsos. But it really doesn't do anything for me. I'd rather watch a Fox Chan or re-read one of the Bigger's novels.