THE SHANGHAI COBRA
US, 1945, 63 minutes, Black and white.
Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, James Cardwell, Joan Barclay, Addison Richards, Arthur Loft, Gene Roth.
Directed by Phil Karlson.
This is one of the later Charlie Chan film starring Sidney Toler. The actor was to die in February 1947. It is also one of the many films featuring Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown, chauffeur to Charlie Chan, associate of Charlie Chan’s son, Tommy (Benson Fong). They are the comic foil to the serious Charlie Chan, getting themselves caught up in all kinds of adventures and dangers. Mantan Moreland does a lot of bug-eyed comedy of being scared which would seem now to be politically incorrect but provided humour in those times.
The plot is rather complex. Charlie Chan works for the government in the war effort but is called in to advise on some deaths which are in connection with the bank that is holding radium for the government. Some of the action takes place on foggy streets but also in the local diner, with some comic touches by the proprietor who tries to persuade people to eat his stew when all they want is a cup of coffee.
The death and its method is similar to those seen in Shanghai before the war. There is a connection with man accused of robbing jewels from bank, injured, Charlie Chan interviewing him, the man diving overboard when being transported. His head was swathed in bandages.
There are various people associated with the bank. There is a security guard. There is the secretary. At the end, Charlie Chan will reveal that the security guard is the man from Shanghai and the secretary is his daughter – and he will be proven innocent. In the meantime, there is a gang of crooks who had been hired to tunnel under the bank from the sewers in order to steal the radium.
A security guard who is really a police officer is killed. Tommy and Birmingham investigate the laundry with a trapdoor down to the sewers. Even Charlie Chan himself gets trapped in the sewers after an explosion – but is able to tap out in Morse Code a message to the police to trap the robbers and free Chan and the others.
Also helping is a private detective in his first investigation – but he gets sidetracked with his attraction to the secretary.
There is a final showdown in the office, trying to identify who was the brains behind the scheme, Charlie Chan throwing some alleged dynamite and one of the officials of the bank reaching out to catch it, knowing what it is. It turns out that he is the detective from Shanghai who has also disguised himself and is masterminding the robbery.
Direction is by Phil Karlson directed number of the Charlie Chan films, moved into some small and taught thrillers in the 1950s, into bigger budget films and some Matt Helm action is in the 1960s.
