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Reviewed by Ken McAlinden With the launch of the Warner Archive series
of burn to order or digital download catalog releases, Warner has been pretty quiet on the pressed disc catalog DVD front
for the last several months. Fortunately, they have not completely given up the idea as this latest entry in the "TCM Spotlight"
series illustrates. For the Charlie Chan Collection, Warner mines its Monogram Studio archives for four new to DVD
postwar entries from the Charlie Chan film series. In Dark Alibi, Charlie Chan (Toler) is drawn
into the case of an ex-con who is set to be executed in two days out of sympathy for his daughter June (Loring) who never
knew of his criminal past. He has his work cut out for him as the man's fingerprints were found at the scene of the robbery-homicide
for which he was convicted, and he must sort through an entire boarding house full of suspects. With the help of valet Birmingham
Brown (Moreland) and "Number Three Son" Tommy (Fong), he soon suspects a larger conspiracy reaching within the very prison
walls where June’s father awaits his execution. In Dangerous Money, a cruise to Samoa takes a
turn for the mysterious when a treasury agent is killed. The ship is filled to the brim with potential suspects and the presence
of esteemed detective Charlie Chan's (Toland) on-board makes them extra cautious about concealing the secrets behind their
suspicious behavior. While the efforts of "Number Two Son" Jimmy (Young) and valet Chatanooga Brown (Best) to impress Chan
prove amusingly counterproductive, Chan still manages to unravel a complex mystery involving forged currencies, misappropriated
art, a novel method of throwing daggers, and even some gender confusion! In The Trap, Charlie Chan is called to a beach
house full of showgirls when one of their own winds up murdered and the hated lead actress has disappeared. Chan is assisted
in his efforts by valet Birmingham Brown (Moreland) and "Number Two Son" Jimmy (Young). The usual complex conspiracy leads
them down a number of blind alleys and towards an assortment of red herrings with checkered pasts before the real killer can
be flushed out. Solving a homicide or two does not slow Jimmy down from pursuing a romance with showgirl/suspect San Toy (Wong). In The Chinese Ring, Charlie Chan
(Winters) takes on a case that literally hits close to home when a Chinese princess is assassinated in the drawing room of
his house. In addition to his usual sidekicks of valet Birmingham Brown (Moreland) and Number Two Son (whose name has inexplicably
been changed to) Tommy (Young), Chan works with local Police Sergeant Bill Davison (Douglas) and feisty reporter Peggy Cartwright
(Currie) to unravel the mystery. The trail of evidence eventually leads to some suspicious dealings involving attempts to
defraud business partners in an illegal airplane purchase scam, although the killer's role in this conspiracy remains cloudy
until the very end. While to modern audiences, the idea of an Anglo actor
playing an Asian character will seem a bit off-putting, the Charlie Chan series of films had been a dependable moneymaker
for Fox and Monogram Studios in both domestic and international markets in the 1930s and 1940s. (Perhaps to stave off proponents
of applying modern political correctness standards to vintage films, the press materials for this DVD set point out that the
series was the most popular American film series in China in the 1930s). Fox produced sixteen films starring Warner Oland
in the role through 1937 and, after Oland's death, eleven more with Sidney Toler in the role from 1938 through 1942. Toler
was able to revive the series at the lower budgeted Monogram Studios beginning in 1944 and made another eleven films until
his death in early 1947. Monogram continued the series with six more films starring Roland Winters as Chan before ending production
in 1949. This release from the Monogram vaults collects three of the last four films starring Toler from 1946 and the debut
appearance of Winters in the role from 1947. All titles are presented in black and white 4:3 video
appropriate for their original theatrical presentations. For the most part, they exceeded my expectations with an appropriate
range of contrast with mild fluctuations in density. Grain is significant, but not overwhelming, and is rendered very accurately
by standard definition mpeg-2 compression standards. The video has not received the level of digital "touch-up" applied to
some of the top-end Warner catalog titles, so there are some significant artifacts that appear from time to time. One of the
more extreme examples of this are some diagonal negative scratches that last for several seconds during the scene in "The
Trap" where Jimmy first shows up at the beach house. I am not sure what the failure mode would be that would cause a film
element running vertically to be scratched diagonally for muliple frames. Other than that, artifacts include a mild assortment
of brief scratches and light speckling as well as occasional softness and increased grain from the "dupes" used for optical
titles and fades. All films are presented with English Dolby Digital 1.0
mono tracks. These tracks have also received less digital processing than some of the higher profile catalog releases from
Warner, but in this case, I think it is a net plus. Background hiss and crackle are a bit higher than they could have been,
but the overall audio track exhibits a more natural fidelity as a result. There are rare but noticeable pops and drop-outs
in the source elements, and critical listeners will occasionally be able to hear the overall character of the background noise
change when faders are lifted. The latter sounds like an actual production artifact rather than a post-production application
of a noise gate to my ears. There are no extras present on this collection. The discs are assembled in a four panel digipack with
plastic trays on each of the panels that hold a single DVD-5 disc for each film. The digipack itself slides into a reasonably
sturdy cardboard slipcover. Disc menus do not include scene selection access, but the films are encoded with a handful of
chapter stops each. The release of the TCM Spotlight: Charlie Chan Collection
proves that while the pulse may be faint, there are still some signs of life in Warner's pressed disc catalog DVD program.
It compiles four postwar Charlie Chan films from Monogram studios including both the final Sidney Toler appearance and the
debut Roland Winters appearance in the role. The film series had largely run out of steam by this point, and its reliance
on racial stereotypes will be like nails on a chalkboard to many modern viewers, but there is still some fun to be had, particularly
in the relatively tightly plotted Dark Alibi and the surreally complex Dangerous Money. They are presented
on DVD with acceptable transfers representing relatively low generation source elements warts and all, very good mono sound
tracks, deluxe digipack packaging and no extras.
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