There is a nice setting to this one with a number of Malibu beach scenes. A theater maestro and his troupe of show girls settle into a motel and boarding room establishment. One of the girls Lois gets garroted when she snoops into a trunk to retrieve a small strong box for the troupe's leading girl called Marcia. Marcia goes missing and it is clear she's involved in a cat-fight blackmail squabble with another troupe girl called Adelaide.
Chan is called to Malibu in a bit of mix up with the case in which he mistakenly believes his son Jimmy has been killed. But Jimmy soon makes his usual intruder-style entrance through a window at the boarding house. There are some suspicious circumstances involving the men with the troupe including a press agent who wants to cover up the murders claiming it would be bad publicity. Maestro King becomes very nervous of the press agent and there is a Dr Brandt who is secretly married to one of the girls in the troupe. Then there is the grim housekeeper Mrs Weebles (Minerva Urecal) who disapproves of the troupe girls' immoral lifestyle as she sees it.
Charlie Chan is more serious in this as I think we only see his customary gleaming smile twice. And there are not a lot of his usual Chinese proverbs either. This is understandable as the film had to be worked around Sidney Toler's severe illness in his final screen appearance. As a consequence all the Chan trickery of earlier films is missing and Charlie has much less to do in the solving of the case. As a result of this I have to rate this one lower and avoid showing sentimentality rating-wise as a Chan fan and yet this is a must-see to say farewell to Sidney Toler who gave so much to the Charlie Chan character
Chan is called to Malibu in a bit of mix up with the case in which he mistakenly believes his son Jimmy has been killed. But Jimmy soon makes his usual intruder-style entrance through a window at the boarding house. There are some suspicious circumstances involving the men with the troupe including a press agent who wants to cover up the murders claiming it would be bad publicity. Maestro King becomes very nervous of the press agent and there is a Dr Brandt who is secretly married to one of the girls in the troupe. Then there is the grim housekeeper Mrs Weebles (Minerva Urecal) who disapproves of the troupe girls' immoral lifestyle as she sees it.
Charlie Chan is more serious in this as I think we only see his customary gleaming smile twice. And there are not a lot of his usual Chinese proverbs either. This is understandable as the film had to be worked around Sidney Toler's severe illness in his final screen appearance. As a consequence all the Chan trickery of earlier films is missing and Charlie has much less to do in the solving of the case. As a result of this I have to rate this one lower and avoid showing sentimentality rating-wise as a Chan fan and yet this is a must-see to say farewell to Sidney Toler who gave so much to the Charlie Chan character