The last six Charlie Chan films had Roland Winters playing the Chinese detective in the round hat. Sidney Toler had passed away early in 1947 and the studio had to find a new Charlie. The Monogram Pictures Company is still producing the series and Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Young still play Charlie's shadows. Even Keye Luke returns for a couple of the films.
The Chinese Ring came out December 1947 which was about a year after the previous film. Roland Winters does an ok job playing Charlie. He's a bit more low-key than the previous character. A Chinese Princess is murdered while visiting Charlie Chan and you know he's not going to let that go unpunished. He puts his mighty thinker to work with the help of his nearly able assistants. They chase down the baddies and have them arrested. It's one of the public domain titles and you can watch it at the link above. It's not near the top of the list of great CC films but it's watchable and familiar. This is the first Chan film directed by William Beaudine. He directed hundreds of movies over decades. Then hundreds more tv shows. He worked fast and all the time. There are some quite interesting bits of work in his filmography, while others, not so good.
Docks Of New Orleans came out in March 1948. There's crime in the chemical business. The head of a large chemical company comes to talk to Charlie Chan who is visiting New Orleans with number 2 son Tommy and chauffeur Birmingham Brown. The worried man is soon murdered. Charlie and the gang work to figure out who did the deed. The murdered men are killed with an elaborate trick involving vacuum tubes and sound. Another that is about the same, you know, average. Not great but it's still fun to be with the characters.
Shanghai Chest was released July 1948. That's a more normal schedule, 2-3 films a year, for this type of series picture. Very few film series never got this many titles. It's the second Chan film directed by William Beaudine. A judge is stabbed to death. Birmingham and Tommy see a man breaking into the house. They are arrested when the man, the owner, catches them. Turns out he's the San Francisco DA. Charlie comes to get the two of them out of jail and the DA asks him for help on the murdered judge's case. The knife had prints of a long dead man. A man who had been sentenced to death by the murdered judge. Well, Charlie will soon figure out how that trick works. Like the other two movies on this bootleg disc Shanghai Chest has a pretty talky script. Cheaper than shoting action. I'm still enjoying the movies but I'm just not as excited about these later films as I am seeing the better ones in the first half of the series.
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