Charlie Chan's Chance

REVIEW:

Previous chapters of Fox's Charlie Chan series are bound to bring comparisons, but this latest won't suffer. A compact, frequently suspenseful and sufficiently convincing detective feature, it rates with its predecessors as entertainment and should equal the fair grosses they registered.

Because Fox isn't overdoing the Charlie Chan character with too frequent repetition, the Oriental detective is still on his pins as a reliable screen character, with the quality of 'Charlie Chan's Chance' setting things up for a future return. As long as they don't kill Charles with more than bi-annual release, Warner Oland and Fox can probably continue along the same lines indef.

Earl Derr Biggers' magazine and novel yarns on the subject provide the structure for this chapter, like the others. It has Biggers also - absence of billing for a dialoger discounts the possibility of another author - who provided the constant philosophical sayings which are delivered through the principal character as a means of sewing the action together and maintaining a regular pace. Chan rolls them off his proverbial knife, giving Oland the pushover job of sounding like a resident of Mott street by simply dropping his prepositions like 'Some heads, like hard nuts, much better if well cracked.'

In solving the new mystery Chan has the help of Inspector Fife of Scotland Yard and Inspector Flannery of New York. But as far as really helping they're just a couple of stooges. Assistant solvers of Biggers' murder puzzle, H. B. Warner and James Kirkwood can't conceal the suppressed desires behind their finely drawn performances. They don't seem real when so easily baffled by foolish facts which can't fool Chan. But, after all, Chan is the boy who's getting the build-up.

Another British detective, who gets into the plot as a corpse, is murdered while working on a case in New York. The path to solution is studded with countless false clues and the all-important erroneous arrest of the juve love interest team, Marion Nixon and Alexander Kirkwood. Three people are killed on the way. One is Li Gung (Edward Peil, Sr.), the Chinese accessory to the criminal master mind. The m. m. is James Todd, whose too youthful appearance in the heavy role accounts the picture's chief note of implausibility.

The killing of Li Gung, though arriving some time ahead of the climax, is the most exciting sequence. He's killed by a bullet intended for Chan, with the stage set and death contraption rigged up for Chan's benefit before he arrives. A black cat walks across the table, pointing the gun at Li Gung and away from Chan. Li is destroyed by his own creation. Chan is sitting in the hot seat while the audience waits for the trigger to snap. Productionally, this talker is good-looking without denoting undue extravagance. The principal location, a penthouse, is neat, and a helpful attitude of realism is gained through the skyline background which looks like New York from the Empire State building tower. Another standout technical detail is the studio version of the East River at night, whose scenic excellence lends importance to an otherwise unimportant situation that under less expert handling might have been mere padding.