20th Century Fox dropped the Charlie Chan series but Mongram thought there were still a few pennies to be had and picked up the series. Production values and quality inevitably dropped though this has a serviceable script - it's about the murder of a scientist in an old dark house who was working on a U boat.
Unfortunately Sidney Toler is back as Chan. It's been a while since I saw a Chan film and forgot how much I didn't like him - he's bored, flat, uninvolving.
Comic relief comes from Chan's two Americanised children and a comic black butler (played by the very talented Mantan Moreland). The story is actually pretty good - solid mystery. It's done in by poor handling.
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