Charlie Chan no Museu de Cera

After first seeing Warner Oland play Charlie Chan in a half-dozen or more pictures, this was my first look at Sidney Toler playing the famous detective. At first I thought he was a distant second to Oland but I have grown to like his version almost as much.

Sen Yung was almost as good as Keye Luke, too, as one of Chan's sons and helpers. Yung plays son "Jimmy" and adds a lot of humor to the movie.

What was really fun about this movie were all the varied characters. There were all kinds of suspects at the wax museum and many pretending to be statutes. The film was humorous and fascinating. Toler's films tended to have more humor in them. I enjoyed ogling Marguerite Chapman in this film.

So far, no announcement of this on DVD, but I expect since the others are slowing being released.

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.

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.

This may be the highest ranked Charlie Chan film on this entire website. I feel bad for not being as captured by it as most people do. When you have a movie series with literally dozens of entries, it's easy to see them becoming episodic. It seems like less a movie and more like just a long episode of a TV show. In fact, "Columbo", another detective series actually did have episodes that were this long. That being said, this is still a good movie. I am starting to get more familiar with the characters, especially Charlie Chan's son, Jimmy.

I really do like how they mixed up the formula a bit here. This wasn't really a simple murder mystery. It was interesting to see Charlie find new light shed on an old case. Was there another movie about that? There's so many characters that have distinct roles it's hard to keep up. There's just so much going on with which character was supposed to die, which one was manipulated, and how someone even died. It's not a mystery to the audience as much, but more to the characters. I still like this dynamic and would recommend this. Uh, sorry I couldn't keep up with the plot that well! ***

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!