Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat (1944)

Redundant and unnecessary.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

*Spoiler/plot- Charlie Chan: The Chinese Cat, 1944. Eminent Chinese detective from Honolulu Hawaii solves a murder mystery when he helps clear up a police case matter that has gone unsolved for years with the help of Chan's #3 son, Jimmy.*Special Stars- Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Koan Woodbury.*Theme- Family can be helpful in solving cases.*Trivia/location/goofs- B & W. Enjoy the quaint and humorous Chinese sayings from this Hawaiian detective.*Emotion- Always enjoyable to see this actor (Sidney Toler)play Honolulu detective Chan with his family assistants.*Based On- Charlie Chan detective character series.

This Charlie Chan B-feature from Monogram moves at a rather quick pace. The husband of a San Francisco socialite(Betty Blythe)is found dead in his study which is locked from the inside. Will a piece on his chess set be a clue? The local police give up on solving the case and several months later a scathing book is published with evidence the socialite killed her husband. Leah Manning(Joan Woodbury)still wants to know the truth about her stepfather's murder and summons the help of Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan(Sidney Toler)to solve the mystery. Due to a prior engagement the super detective only has 48 hours to bring the case to a proper close. He has some help, for what its worth, from #3 son Tommy(Benson Fong)and taxi driver Birmingham Brown(Mantan Moreland). Other players: Weldon Heyburn, Cy Kendall, John Davidson and T. Stanford Jolley.

This is my seventh review of a Charlie Chan movie in series chronological order during these consecutive days. It's also my first for the Monogram entries, of which this one is the second. In this one, a young woman's stepfather is murdered in a closed room. She enlists Charlie in the case through communicating with his "No. 3 Son" Tommy (Benson Fong) while both stay at a hotel. Also along for the ride, for only the second time, is cab driver Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland)...The noticeable changes from Fox to Monogram, besides more comic relief with both Fong and Moreland, is some more time for the music score to go along with some more action sequences near the end before we hear Charlie's assessment of the case. Also, the plotting isn't too serious and Chan's wisecracks to his son seem almost mean-spirited, like Abbott & Costello like, though one can take them with a grain of salt. And while Mantan's antics, especially his looks of fright, would probably not do in these politically correct times, he still can be entertainingly funny with what he does here and I don't think it reflects badly on his race at all since to me he's just a funny looking clown who's quite endearing, whatever the race. So on that note, I quite recommend Charlie Chan in the The Chinese Cat. P.S. Mr. Moreland was a native of Monroe in my now home state of Louisiana. And Sam Flint, who played Thomas P. Manning here, was another player in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life. He was the relieved banker in Mr. Potter's office wiping his forehead during the run-on-the-bank sequence.

The Monogram Chan's, apart from falling production values, were also marked by more and more action scenes with or without cliffhanger music and less on the explanatory dialogue so necessary with the Fox's. With the action came more non-sequiteurs or simply incongruous scenes - in this one take Tommy Chan being beaten to a pulp before his respected father's calm eyes! Great stuff for teenagers in 1944 but surely something of which the Charlie we know should have been thoroughly ashamed?!Rich amateur chess player murdered six months previously, at the time to the utter bafflement of the police - Charlie has less than two days to research the case and solve it. And does he bring the rather impotent detective and the daughter of the murdered man together, and give the detective a promotion for doing nothing? I ain't saying! The climax in the Fun Two Corridors Cupboard And Room brings a baddies Wild West hideout suspiciously to mind, but what the Heck!Well made (for Monogram) and enjoyable entry in the series.