Black Magic

This late-entry Charlie Chan movie gets marks simply for the entertainment, not for a deep-thinking suspenseful "whodunnit." It's just fun to watch with an always-smiling daughter (played by Frances Chen) replacing number-whatever-son and the eyes-popping-out-of-the-head Mantan Moreland adding humor, although of his humor is a bit stupid (and insulting to black folks, I'm sure). However, Moreland is a likable guy so it's hard to get annoyed at his silliness.

The story is a familiar one of the day, about the occult (seances) and, thankfully, another that exposes the mediums as crooks.

These Sidney Toler-Mantan Moreland collaborations, as opposed to the early Warner Oland/Charlie Chan movies, replied more on comedy and gimmicks rather than brains, and once you accept that, you just go along with an entertaining hour of lamebrain fun, especially when Chan starts to put people down with his sarcasm.

Average Monogram Chan potboiler, in the Mongram House with some of the Monogram staff - but then, I've always liked this one! The surviving print (in Chanthology) is in excellent condition, lending a nice overall atmosphere to the proceedings and helping a lot in following the story. One of the things that always makes me smile watching Monogram's is that the plots usually involve dispensing with some or a lot of accepted social conventions - they weren't meant to be analysed and mulled over decades later. In this Moreland and Frances Chan are in and out of the house like yo-yo's, and creeping all over the place unseen - it wasn't their house but as in a lot of Monogram's you weren't supposed to dwell on ownership issues which obstructed juvenile frisson or slapstick.

At a séance a man is apparently shot dead with what turns out to be an invisible bullet, as Charlie jocularly puts it. The quest is on to find out which of the clients around the table did it and how. The way in which Charlie solved it is depressingly familiar and trite, but everything was wrapped up nicely anyway. As usual Moreland was acting scared witless, in fact with "gremlins galloping up and down his spine" this time - a fantastic image! Frances Chan couldn't act very well but she certainly looked like she was enjoying the experience of making a movie with her constant smiles - her sunny disposition seemed to be rubbing off on Toler too who was enjoying his own aphorisms more than ever.

Overall, nice to watch once in a while especially in a Chan season. And I prefer big shoes to big corns.

This is my eighth review of a Charlie Chan movie in series chronological order on these consecutive days. In this one, someone is murdered during a séance of which one of the witnesses is Chan's daughter, Frances (Frances Chan). Oh, and the newly hired butler is one Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland)...So instead of one of his adult sons, here Charlie is assisted by his lovely daughter who doesn't get any wisecracks aimed at her unlike her sometimes bumbling brothers, just compliments on her beauty and brains (though hearing the actress occasionally repeat others' lines can be somewhat annoying). With the mystery treated a little more serious here then the previous one called The Chinese Cat, Moreland's antics are also not as frequent but you still get plenty of it in the beginning and the end. As I've said before, his characterization borders on a stereotype that wouldn't do in today's social atmosphere but if you just think of him as a harmless clown that wouldn't hurt anybody, his shenanigans should be amusing enough. Anyway, I highly enjoyed Black Magic (or Meeting at Midnight), and if you love Charlie Chan, you'll probably enjoy this. P.S. Ms. Frances Chan actually appeared as the youngest Chan daughter in a previous entry, now considered lost, called Charlie Chan's Greatest Case. And supporting player Geraldine Wall-who's Harriet Green here-is another one in these series entries I'd like to cite as being born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill. and that she was originally cast as Dolly Tate in the movie version of Annie Get Your Gun when Judy Garland was cast (in fact, I have a CD of the soundtrack album with her voice tracks on maybe one or two songs) but was replaced by Benay Venuta when Betty Hutton replaced Ms. Garland.

This installment of the Chan series is more light-hearted than many, with daughter Frances replacing her brothers in the family sidekick roll, and Birmingham Brown getting a lot of screen time. The séance is another of the classic murder mystery settings used in the series - for the second time, in fact. The complaints by other reviewers about Frances Chan's acting boggle the mind - she's an appealing character, and this ain't Shakespeare, folks. It's nice to have the woman's - or girl's - touch in the series, and Sidney Toler is more affectionate towards her than to sons one and two. Hypnosis and plastic surgery are overworked gimmicks in mysteries, but hey, this is B-movie-land. Mantan Moreland is given plenty of time to clown, and he does his usual great job of it. Yes, he plays the fool, but no more so than my beloved Three Stooges, and folks, they were as white as you can get. If you can't see the difference between Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland, that's a you problem.

Considering it was made in a few weeks with a minimal budget, this Chan was a fun hour of entertainment. Charlie is Charlie - one step ahead of the police he helps - Frances is a breath of fresh air, and Birmingham entertains with his comic acting. Black Magic is exactly what it set out to be - not Citizen Kane, and not trying to be.

This is mostly a routine Charlie Chan mystery with only a couple of points in its favor. While there are a couple of interesting clues to the crime, the characters, dialogue, and action are all stereotyped or dated, and often dull. The beginning seems to hold some possibilities: a man is murdered at a seance, and although he was apparently shot, no trace of the bullet can be found. The police are baffled, and of course call in Charlie Chan to solve the crime. Charlie is assisted this time not by one of his sons, but by his daughter Frances. Unfortunately, it never really takes off from there.

The phony medium setting offers some opportunities for comedy, but most of those do not work too well. The climax has a bit of suspense to it, and the eventual solution has a couple of creative points in it, but there are a lot of listless stretches to sit through before you can get there.

Overall, "Meeting at Midnight" (or, "Charlie Chan in Black Magic") is not one of the better mystery films around.