BLACK MAGIC

US, 1944, 67 minutes, Black and white.
Sydney Toler. Marntan Moreland, Frances Chan, Joseph Crehan, Jacqueline De Wit.
Directed by Phil Rosen.

By this stage all the Charlie Chan films with Sidney Toler, the material was rather familiar as well as the method.

Charlie Chan's daughter, Frances, is present at a seance where the chief medium is shot with a bullet of frozen blood. Those present have heard a voice asking a question about an event in London in 1935. The police arrive, and Frances mentions her father.

There are various interrogations, examinations of the house and finding how the seances were conducted. The medium's wife is under suspicion, goes out of the house, seems to walk in a trance and is persuaded by voice to step over the edge of the roof of the building. Later, the same will happen to Charlie Chan himself – although he has provided himself with an antidote to the pill which put him in a trance.

A number of those present have motives for the killing but it turns out to be the revenge of a magician who had been in an accident and had recovered but had plastic surgery becoming unrecognisable.

It can be noted that Mantan Moreland has the same kind of role as ever, but probably more prominent in this one than many others, bug eyed, nervous, the kind of comedy that was popular at the time but is now not so politically correct.

The direction was by Phil Rosen who worked with Edison, directed quite a number of small-budget supporting features and several of the Charlie Chan films.