The Shanghai Chest

source: The Shanghai Chest

Moviecut—The Shanghai Chest

The Shanghai Chest

Another great title let down by a poor script, low budget, and mostly bad acting. This film has Tim Ryan as police Lt. Mike Ruark, whom Chan calls, "Lt. Mike". Overall, it is annoying rather than endearing. Tim Ryan is credited with "additional dialogue". If only he came up with better words. Watch a Warner Oland Chan instead.

Compared to some other Monogram-produced Charlie Chan films I've watched, "The Shanghai Chest" is a cut above. The extremely prolific, and also series regular, director William "One Shot" Beaudine shoots this one with what could, at certain moments, if one squints hard enough, even be described as sort of a "style": flashbacks, tilted camera angles, montages. The plot is also fairly intriguing (although Chan once again pulls the guilty party like a rabbit out of his hat, with absolutely no evidence supporting his theory). The low budget is tolerably camouflaged. Even the comedy is funnier than usual, like for example in a short exchange between Mantan Moreland and an uncredited Willie Best. My favorite Chan line: "Statement has earmarks of extreme truthfulness"! ** out of 4.

Charlie Chan (Roland Winters) must prove the innocence of a deeply stupid man (John Alvin) who puts his fingerprints all over a murder weapon. Contrived mess of a mystery with particularly weak writing, even for Monogram. Winters is terrible as Chan. I can't stress that enough. Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung are back playing buffoonish comic relief sidekicks Birmingham and Tommy. There's nothing to recommend about this one. If you're a Charlie Chan completist, I suppose you should at least try it. If you're new to Charlie Chan films, please don't let this or any of the Roland Winters movies be your first. As a matter of fact, avoid all of the Monogram movies until you've seen the far superior Fox movies first.

The Shanghai Chest from 1948 is a Charlie Chan movie that relies on a former plot. Forging fingerprints came up in another Chan film, I believe with Sidney Toler. In this case, a dead man's fingerprints keep showing up at murder scenes. Charlie this time has no trouble figuring out how the fingerprints got there, since it was a big part of the former investigation. The cast includes Roland Winters, Mantan Moreland, Victor Sen Yung, and Tim Ryan. Tommy and Birmingham get into all kinds of trouble - they think they see a burglary and climb in a window, only to be arrested. In the end, they save the day - by mistake. Entertaining as always.