The Scarlet Clue

Some Charlie Chan movies by Monogram are just wretched. "The Scarlet Clue", however, is fairly well done. Lighting and camera angles make for a suitably mysterious atmosphere. The whodunit puzzle contains a well defined group of suspects. And the script is humorous, both the dialogue between Chan and his son, and the constant jabber of the wonderful Mantan Moreland.

But the film seems terribly dated. The plot, which involves WWII radar secrets in a radio station, is outmoded, and the scientific "equipment" belongs in a museum. Moreover, production values are almost nonexistent. There are some plot holes; and at the end, Chan never tells us how he deduced the identity of the killer.

Overall, for those who enjoy Charlie Chan movies, "The Scarlet Clue" is one of the better ones to watch. Everyone else will probably find this movie lame.

This was a nice entry in the Chan series [32/38], with Charlie, Tommy and Birmingham in fine comic form. The rest of the cast displayed no sense of humour at all.

Charlie was still working for the Government this time after a gang of murdering agitators who were after radar secrets from an "experimental" radio, television and radar broadcaster. They don't write radar shows like they used to ... A nice touch was that a suspect (who was responsible for the original apparently indelible clue) was last seen on the 2nd floor of the radio building, found dead on the 10th after falling from a great height. Convoluted! The sets were used thoroughly in the previous film The Jade Mask, the gas chamber being turned in this into an ante room for a weather chamber. Moreland excelled himself with this one, with endless solo wisecracks or even as part of a double act. Was it unacceptable in Hollywood back then for him to have taken his taxi driver cap off as it would have made him appear an equal?

A good Monogram Toler plus Moreland film, even if with more ridiculous intricacies in the plot than usual.

Famed detective and government agent Charlie Chan is back again for this Monogram film where Charlie is trailing a suspect who may be involved with plans to steal radar equipment/secrets from our government for foreign spies and who has just killed aboard a ship. Chan and detective friend trace suspect back to a radio show and from there on Charlie helps at least three more people get killed with his investigation. This is an interesting Chan vehicle and gives Sidney Toler plenty of screen time to hone his Chan skills. Benson Fong and Mantan Moreland are back once again and lift the mundane to the amusing with their comic routines. Moreland, again, steals his scenes and gives the film a lot of vitality it would otherwise not have. I particularly like a couple of routines he does in the film with a guy he knows and neither one lets the other finish the sentence. The comic timing was first-rate! As for the mystery, it is not too terribly confusing though when the end is told no real explanation as to why and who did crimes is revealed fully. I enjoyed many of the characterizations of the show people. I thought the means of death were very inventive, and I loved the whole thing with the elevator. Very clever.

The mystery begins as Chan tracks a murderer across country to a radio/tv station. Once on the scene murder murders occur and Charlie, his son and Birmingham Brown almost meet their end in a rather novel way.

This reminds me of the great Frankie Darro/Mantan Moreland film Up in the Air which concerns murder in a radio station. That film moves better than this one in many ways since it never gets side tracked with the sleuthing of Number Three Son. Still this one has some novel twists in the means of murdering someone which keep this a watchable film.

I'm not entirely happy with the denouncement since events not long before it prove that the filmmakers were far from being fair.

Still for all its flaws its an enjoyable movie, especially with Moreland and his night club partner "not" saying anything

6 out of 10.

THE SCARLET CLUE is a fairly interesting Charlie Chan film from the '40s, depending on its humor for the performances of BENSON FONG as #3 son, MANTAN MORELAND as Birmingham Brown and BEN CARTER as Ben Carter. The mysterious deaths of people associated with a radio program that is a front for some sort of radar secrets espionage, is at the heart of the crimes Chan must solve.

SIDNEY TOLER was beginning to show signs of fatigue (he died two years later) and the sets and production values are noticeably reduced from what they were when the Chan films were being made by Fox. During the TCM showing of the film, Robert Osborne mentioned that it was Toler himself who brought the idea of furthering the Chan adventures to another studio after shopping the idea around.

VIRGINIA BRISSAC, JACK NORTON, JANET SHAW and HELEN DEVERELL are among the chief suspects. I recognized Miss Brissac from her performance as the hard of hearing Miss Seiffert from THE SNAKE PIT. She has quite a different role here.

Enjoyable fluff, not one of the best in the Chan series but a respectable enough entry from Monogram.

Favorite line: When son #3 tells his dad that he has an idea but then immediately forgets what he wanted to say, Chan replies: "It's now in solitary confinement."