Le dragon rouge

A man who has knowledge of a new element that will be used to create an enormous A- bomb is killed as he talks to a group of people who late become suspects. Since this is a matter of national security, our famous detective is called to the scene. Of course, one of his sons is there and so is Chattanooga Brown, the cousin of Birmingham Brown (the Mantan Moreland character). Because there is no identifying the bullet through ballistics, things get kind of hairy. Most of the suspects are spies or others who have done some evil dealings in the past. Soon, murders are being committed. Sometimes the humor gets in the way . Can one imagine something as serious as a nuclear weapon being created as these guys bumble around. Nevertheless, it still has some charm.

Stolen secret papers contain info on the mysterious 95th element, which could be used to build a giant atom bomb. Charlie Chan signs on to recover said papers—and also to track down the murderer who shot the secretary before snatching those vital documents.

Unfortunately, most of the picture is not as exciting as that sounds....however, this late entry in the Chan series is passably entertaining as well as short and sweet.

A mystery mechanism is used to commit multiple murders—one shot is always heard but two bullets are found. Can Chan solve the riddle before he too becomes a target?

Benson Fong is on hand again as Chan's #3 son Tommy, while Willie Best takes on chauffeur duties for this picture (as Chattanooga Brown, cousin to Mantan Moreland's Birmingham Brown). Tommy and Chattanooga manage most of the comic relief with mildly humorous exchanges such as:

Chattanooga: "My hair's getting tired." Tommy Chan: ""Your hair is tired?" Chattanooga: "Yeah, for the last 10 minutes it's been standing on end."

The fact that Sidney Toler dancing the rhumba is probably the highlight of the picture might tell you something.

Charlie does the Rhumba in this one, a must see for fans! It's considered one of the worst Monograms but I always liked this one, maybe because it's one of the harder to find Chans. I thought the premise of the remote controlled bullets was a decent effort.

Sometimes I dread watching some of the later Monogram Chan's, but this one was a pleasure to watch. It's a friendly Chan that's easy to digest. The story is not convoluted with so many twists and turns that you need to take notes to follow the story. This one's pretty basic. Atom bomb secrets are stolen in Checkoslovakia and end up in Mexico City. A secret govt. agent who is watching the thief gets murdered in a mysterious way - one gun shot is heard, but two bullets are found. There are a group of suspects for the murder, and they're all looking for the secret papers. It's Charlie's job to find the papers first, and then find the murderer.

I like the clue the govt. agent leaves on the typewriter as he is dying. It's fun trying to figure out what the message means. If you can do it the first time you watch this flick, you are smarter than me. The way the people are murdered is pretty ingenious, which adds to the mystery. Also, I liked the fact that Chattanooga and #3 son had limited roles in this flick. The focus of these movies should be Charlie and the mystery he is trying to solve, but too many times the mood is destroyed in the name of comedy relief. Thankfully, Red Dragon doesn't have much of that. Another nice aspect was the amount of sets and locations. It helped give the movie a nice flow - it never got bogged down or boring. Sometimes these cheap Monogram's seem claustrophobic, slow, and boring, but this one bounced all around the city.

I read that the original running time for this movie was 64 minutes, but the one I watched last night was a hair under 59 minutes. This was a hard one to track down. It didn't seem like the missing 5 minutes hurt the story. Hopefully, it was just fluff, like Chattanooga and #3 son playing around. If you are a Chan fan and can find this one, it's well worth watching.

This one gets my vote for the weakest Chan film starring the great Sidney Toler. Even Toler's superb acting skills cannot get this inert mass airborne, unfortunately.

If you looked at this film on paper, so to speak, it seems like it should work. We get a quite good premise, and the cast of supporting characters aren't bad. I think the fault likes in the direction, because the pace of this film is sometimes painfully slow. To me, there often is little sense of dramatic tension or excitement. With all the other Chan films, there's more sense of fun and energy than I find here. I say that as someone who has seen all the films, and liked all but this one, to varying degrees. I also think the Monogram films are unjustly underrated, because they are good packages of entertainment. I'll watch this one again at some point, but it's last on my list.