The Trap

There is a nice setting to this one with a number of Malibu beach scenes. A theater maestro and his troupe of show girls settle into a motel and boarding room establishment. One of the girls Lois gets garroted when she snoops into a trunk to retrieve a small strong box for the troupe's leading girl called Marcia. Marcia goes missing and it is clear she's involved in a cat-fight blackmail squabble with another troupe girl called Adelaide.

Chan is called to Malibu in a bit of mix up with the case in which he mistakenly believes his son Jimmy has been killed. But Jimmy soon makes his usual intruder-style entrance through a window at the boarding house. There are some suspicious circumstances involving the men with the troupe including a press agent who wants to cover up the murders claiming it would be bad publicity. Maestro King becomes very nervous of the press agent and there is a Dr Brandt who is secretly married to one of the girls in the troupe. Then there is the grim housekeeper Mrs Weebles (Minerva Urecal) who disapproves of the troupe girls' immoral lifestyle as she sees it.

Charlie Chan is more serious in this as I think we only see his customary gleaming smile twice. And there are not a lot of his usual Chinese proverbs either. This is understandable as the film had to be worked around Sidney Toler's severe illness in his final screen appearance. As a consequence all the Chan trickery of earlier films is missing and Charlie has much less to do in the solving of the case. As a result of this I have to rate this one lower and avoid showing sentimentality rating-wise as a Chan fan and yet this is a must-see to say farewell to Sidney Toler who gave so much to the Charlie Chan character

Apparently, Sidney Toler was in the latter stages of cancer. So he didn't seem to have much spark, even when he abuses his son. This particular episode is about a troupe of showgirls, taking some time off at a beach house. There is hostility from the start from within the group and from the housekeeper. The men running the show have agendas themselves. There apparently are some secrets being kept. A quiet young woman is murdered as she tried to cater to the wishes of a powerful actress (who ends up dead herself). Charlie is almost like a shepherd, trying to round up the suspects and keep them in order while he investigates. Of course, we have Jimmy and Birmingham getting in the way and ignoring orders. Birmingham seems cursed to be afraid of all animate and inanimate objects. When asked to be quiet, he creates incredible chaos. Jimmy pushes the envelope at every turn. I think the biggest failing of this is that there is no suspense because we really don't have any idea what the dramatic forces are.

This was Sidney Toler's last film as detective Charlie Chan, the last in a series of twenty-two, produced between 1938 and 1946.

The physical fragility of the actor is visible, as he appears in fewer scenes, moves slowly and even demonstrates a relative verbal economy that is not characteristic of the character. There is, for example, not a single "correction please" in Toler's farewell to the character. A film where we have more "number 2 Son" and Birmingham than Chan.

The plot is what you would expect from a banal television police series and the value of this work is above all historical and sentimental, for fans of the character.

Can we agree that Sidney Toler was ill at the time of this movie, and stop talking about it. This isn't' film class - you don't have to tell us all you know about the back-story of the series. Toler does a perfectly good job in this episode of the series - Charlie Chan wasn't exactly Shakespeare, and didn't require great acting. Having several female characters in a Chan mystery was rare, and it's a nice change to me. The son role isn't overplayed in this movie, and while it's not Mantan Moreland's best role, he gives just enough comic relief to the film. Based on the reviews here, you'd think that a prize was being given for nastiest review. Lighten up - the Chan series was meant as light entertainment - not film school criticism fodder. You get action, suspense, comedy, and even a bit of romance all in an hour. Over the years, I saw this 3-4 times before I knew anything about the making of the Chan films, and I always thought it was every bit as good as most of the others in the series. IF you can't just sit back and enjoy this Chan, that's a YOU problem, not a problem with the movie.

When one of the showgirls in a troupe staying at a beach house is killed, novice showgirl Barbara Jean Wong, calls on that famous detective, Jimmy Chan. Fortunately, his father, Charlie Chan, shows up in the person of Sidney Toler.

Under the direction of Howard Bretherton, this is the strongest of of the Monogram Charlie Chans, due a good mystery script and Bretherton's superior ability to direct the comedy sequences on which the series now relied. Mantan Moreland, as Oland's other assistant, gets a lot more and better comedy in his role, and Victor Sen Yung flourishes. The ladies in the troupe include Rita Quigley and Anne Nagel, and Kirk Nagel, Minerva Urecal, and Larry Blake perform their more serious roles well.

Alas, it was the end for Toler. He had been playing the role for almost a decade by this point, but he was dying of cancer. He would died on February 12, 1947 at the age of 72, after sixty-five years in show business.