Charlie Chan en el museo de cera

This is another fine example of how good Toler can be in a Chan film if he is surrounded by spooky atmosphere, a good supporting cast, and a fine script. Most of the movie takes place inside the wax museum providing a great back drop for all the goings on. This is one of the best of the series. Good to watch on a rainy night.

Of all the Chans that I know, this is both the best and the most interesting.

The setting is really cool. Its a wax museum where contemporary crimes are displayed, using personalities that are alive and are among the statues of themselves. It is also a plastic surgery where crooks get their faces changed. And thirdly it is the site of a broadcast radio show where unsolved crimes are re-enacted on-air.

It sounds complicated, and it is. But it is all done very matter of factly, so that these three very clever notions overlap and sometimes merge. Regular readers of my comments know that I love this sort of stuff, stuff I call "folding." Folding is stuff that plays with the notions of representation, and the fun is in how the movieness can play with itself, presenting to us and at the same time noodling with what it means to present.

Detecting in folds has always been a way of discovering narrative. Charlie Chan mysteries aren't the most cerebral of things along these lines. And the actual mystery here is impossible for the audience to anticipate. Its just revealed.

But in just the form of the thing, its great fun. It even has a chess-playing machine, a pretty savvy reference to a fourth fold. (One of the earliest

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Dangerous McBirney, who's just been sentenced to death on the evidence Charlie Chan gave, escapes and heads directly for an old acquaintance, Dr. Cream, once a famous facial surgeon (with his 'best' clients being from the underworld), to get a 'new' face from him; but Dr. Cream has gone into another business now: he's the owner of a wax museum of crime - and exactly from there a radio reporter decides to make a broadcast on the infamous Rocke case, where an innocent man was executed, as Charlie had always pointed out; and of course, he invites Charlie as well as his 'antagonist' Dr. Von Brom, who insists that Rocke was guilty.

Now can you imagine a more appropriate setting for a creepy, mysterious murder mystery with more and more complications coming up and confusing us as well as Charlie (and Jimmy, who as usual finds his way in through some rear window) than a 'Crime Museum', full of dummies portraying murderers with guns and daggers in their hands, jail cells, gallows, executioner's axes and electric chairs...? And the ruthless killers, who are after Charlie because he helped convict McBirney, intend to use the latter in a VERY diabolical way...

There are so many different murder cases intertwined here that in the end we really don't know anymore who's who (especially since there's someone here who can 'change' faces) and who's after whom; and so we all (especially Jimmy...) witness some REALLY frightening scenes in this eerie 'House of Wax' - a movie which provides us with absolutely GREAT crime entertainment, a 'must' for every fan of the genre!

Charlie Chan At The Wax Museum opens with a dramatic courtroom escape by Marc Lawrence who has vowed to get Charlie Chan for supplying the evidence that has earned him a trip to old Sparky at Sing Sing. Lawrence books for the wax museum where owner/exhibitor C. Henry Gordon is a plastic surgeon and the place is just a hideout for criminals seeking new faces.

As it turns out there is to be a broadcast tonight from the museum where dueling detectives Sidney Toler and former Berlin police detective Michael Visaroff will debate a past crime where Toler feels the wrong man was hanged. It's where Lawrence plans some fiendish revenge on Charlie Chan. But it's Visaroff who winds up dead and Lawrence who spends most of the film in facial bandages also dies. It's another killer with a whole different agenda that Toler and number two son Victor Sen Yung have to find.

It's the usual suspect soup at the wax museum, but the film is unusual in that Charlie Chan is the target and nearly gets done in by the killer. That little twist makes Charlie Chan At The Wax Museum one of the best Charlie Chan films in the series.

Very atmospheric entry in the Chan series with Charlie trying to set the record straight in a case that has been falsely judged. Marc Lawrence gives a standout performance as a murderer set for the death penalty by Chan's testimony but subsequently escapes seeking plastic surgery at the wax museum run by Henry Gordon. The storyline is that Chan is to square off with Berlin detective Dr Otto Von Brom (Michael Visaroff) on a radio broadcast from the museum to reassess this case in which Von Brom pinned the murder on innocent Joe Rocke. Chan accepts the challenge suspecting Gordon of harboring Lawrence at the museum. The cast turns in uniformly good performances. However, the viewer must contend with the irrepressible Sen Yung as Jimmy Chan and his silliness. This is a decent mystery but it is the filming and setting of this movie that makes it a cut above the other Chan films.