***SPOILERS*** Actor Sidney Toler's last film as the Chinese/American master detective Charlie Chan who was to pass away from cancer just two months after the films "The Trap" release. Here Charlie is involved in a double murder of two showgirls Lois & Marcia, Jan Bryant & Anne Nagel, while taking in the sun and sands on the beaches of Malibu. It becomes apparent to Charlie that the murders weren't of a personal nature but to frame someone into committing them as a act of revenge against him or her.
Using a silk bath-rob cord to commit the killings turns out to be the killers biggest slip-up with the two victims strangled from the front not behind making it apparent to Charlie that they both must have known and trusted their killer by letting him get so close to them without screaming for help. After uncovering a number of false clues the truth comes out for what the killer's motive were in framing one of the persons involved with the murdered showgirls "Impresairo" Cole King, Howard Negley, as an act of bitter revenge. What that revenge had to do with was almost forgotten by almost everyone including King but the person who tried to frame him.
***SPOILERS*** In a trap set by Charlie and his #1 son Jimmy, Victor Sen Yung, and his faithful but bumbling servant Bermingham Brown, Mantan Morland, the killer comes out of the shadows in order murder victim #3 Jimmy's Chinese girlfriend San Toy, Barbara Jean, because she was getting, together with Jimmy, too close to the truth that the trap that Charlie set for the killer sprang on him. In a wild 75 to 80 mph car chase with Birmingham behind the wheel on the Pacific Coast Highway the killer lost control and ended up killing him or herself in the crash. But not after confessing his crime, by then what did he have to lose anyway but his life, to Charlie in order to put an end to this double murder case.
Using a silk bath-rob cord to commit the killings turns out to be the killers biggest slip-up with the two victims strangled from the front not behind making it apparent to Charlie that they both must have known and trusted their killer by letting him get so close to them without screaming for help. After uncovering a number of false clues the truth comes out for what the killer's motive were in framing one of the persons involved with the murdered showgirls "Impresairo" Cole King, Howard Negley, as an act of bitter revenge. What that revenge had to do with was almost forgotten by almost everyone including King but the person who tried to frame him.
***SPOILERS*** In a trap set by Charlie and his #1 son Jimmy, Victor Sen Yung, and his faithful but bumbling servant Bermingham Brown, Mantan Morland, the killer comes out of the shadows in order murder victim #3 Jimmy's Chinese girlfriend San Toy, Barbara Jean, because she was getting, together with Jimmy, too close to the truth that the trap that Charlie set for the killer sprang on him. In a wild 75 to 80 mph car chase with Birmingham behind the wheel on the Pacific Coast Highway the killer lost control and ended up killing him or herself in the crash. But not after confessing his crime, by then what did he have to lose anyway but his life, to Charlie in order to put an end to this double murder case.