ctyankee1 A man that is an inventor is protected by secret agents because he has invented a torpedo and they don't want the plans of his invention in the wrong hands. He dies suddenly when he goes down to meet his guests for drinks in his large expensive house. Birmingham/Mantan Moreland who plays in a lot of Chan movies just happens to arrive at the house to deliver something just as the man died. The agent won't let anyone leave. When he finds out what happen his big eyes open wide and he is scared. There are no marks to show how the inventor died. Chan who always wears a light colored suit gets called in to investigate what happened with the death of the inventor. Chan's daughter Iris and son number 3 Tommy are there and thought they would go on a sight seeing trip with their father. Chan now has 14 kids. Iris and Tommy are disappointed and are going to turn in to detectives without their fathers knowledge and go to where their father is. Charlie Chan comes on the scene and feels the man was murdered but shows no signs of how he died. He waits for the coroner's report.The paper with the torpedo plans shows up that were missing but Chan's looks at them and says they are a forgery. About 8 people are now delayed and all considered suspects and cannot leave the house. Chan's kids show up and sneak in the house and create more problems.The coroner's report shows the inventor died by being electrocuted. Another person gets killed in the house while everyone is in the room and the lights are on. Chan knows he is dealing with murders who are very cleaver. He feels there was more than one person involved.The end is very detailed and surprising but like Charlie Chan mysteries he always gets his killer(s).

csteidler Sidney Toler is fine as always but the budget has noticeably shrunk in this first series entry produced by Monogram Pictures. It's not that the plot or the dialog are especially weak....it's just that many scenes and conversations do not really appear to have been rehearsed. Benson Fong and Marianne Quan are silly but fun as number three son Tommy and number two daughter Iris. Their famous father is now in Washington on a wartime assignment and the kids are visiting: "Secret service, huh?" Fong notes. "Bet Pop needs my help if he wants to keep this job." The plot concerns a scientist developing plans for some special bombs that he tests in a tub of water in his laboratory. He has dinner guests but never makes it from the lab down to the dining room—"He's dead and the plans are missing" about sums it up when Mr. Chan arrives on the scene, having been assigned to investigate. All of the guests are suspects…which of them are spies? The complicated murders are done using electrical and magnetic tricks, which Chan eventually works out with both assistance and interference from his kids. Mantan Moreland has a couple of good lines as a guest's employee; soon the series would find him in a larger role as Chan's chauffeur but here he merely gets a few scenes of comic relief. It does look hastily put together and includes some uncertain performances and odd pauses...but hey, it's not meant to be anything fancy. Enjoyable if unspectacular.

ccthemovieman-1 This movie has some of the best film noir photography I have seen in all the Charlie Chan entries. This is one I am still waiting to have issued on DVD, so I can enjoy those visuals.Storywise, it's a decent story with an interesting cast of suspects. My complaint is fairly minor: it is a little below-average in the amount of humorous Charlie Chan proverbs that we Chan fans love so much. Otherwise, I enjoyed the movie.Although not Charlie's official chauffeur-assistant in here as he was in most of these Monogram Chan films, Mantan Moreland ("Birmingham Brown") plays his usual role as a guy helping out and adding humor. He's a likable guy as are all of Charlie's kids, two of them joining in this mystery. We get Number Three Son "Tommie" (Benson Fong) and daughter "Iris" (Marianne Quon. Chan's kids are always nosy, goodhearted and, in the latter-day films, not that helpful.A few quick action scenes help keep things rolling and, as usual, we get Charlie's summary of the case at the end in which our hero exposes the crook. Overall, is this a great Charlie Chan film? No, it's average....but just average is still good to me. I love these films and hope all of them eventually are available on disc.

Lechuguilla A house full of guests is the setting for this mystery story, wherein a scientist is murdered. Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) investigates, along with his two irksome kids. The wonderful Mantan Moreland plays a bug-eyed Birmingham Brown, a role inserted presumably to add comic relief.This sixty-three minute film contains about fifty minutes of story. The rest is filler, mostly in the film's first half. The story, about a secret WWII torpedo plan, is simple and direct. It's the kind of film I can envision as being typical for a 1940's Saturday afternoon matinée. There's a stage play quality to it, in that most of the scenes take place in three or four rooms. As with other films in the Chan series, the production design here is minimal and cheap looking. The emphasis is on the whodunit puzzle, but that's what counts most for murder mystery fans.And the script does provide a good puzzle. The killer is camouflaged amid well thought out red herrings, in a way that makes solving the puzzle not real easy.For Charlie Chan fans, this is one of the better mysteries in the Monogram series. For everyone else, the film has little or nothing to offer.