Support us click the picture and BUY at Amazon
Click Pic for Amazon Page
Charlie Chan Dangerous Money
TCM Charlie Chan Collection
Sidney Toler, Victor Sen Yung, Willie Best
Directed by Terry O. Morse
Monogram Pictures 1946
Warner Home Video 2010
Fullscreen, 61 minutes
Charlie Chan Dangerous Money is probably the lesser mystery of the four featured in the TCM Spotlight Charlie Chan Collection DVD set. The other movies are Dark Alibi and The Trap both made in 1946 with Sidney Toler while 1947's The Chinese Ring stars Roland Winters as the venerable detective with the now politically incorrect Chinee speech pattern.
In this Charlie Chan DVD mystery the detective, his number two son (Victor Sen Yung), and Chatanooga Brown are onboard a ship sailing to Australia. On the way there an American Treasury agent is murdered and Chan decides to solve the case before the ship gets on its way after stopping in Samoa.
The ship features a salesman, a knife thrower, a purser and his girlfriend who is being blackmailed, a British couple, an ichthyologist, his wife, and his assistant, and a couple of people on their way back to Samoa.
The mystery itself is not particularly well thought out so you end up watching this Charlie Chan DVD just for the character.
Dangerous Money features the usual scenes with number something son and the Black assistant getting in trouble somewhere while investigating. This time, their investigating does prove useful.
Toler's Chan is particularly stiff in this mystery. This is because the actor was in great pain from intestinal cancer. For some reason, this also affected Chan's ability to coin a proverb or saying.
Dangerous Money, one of 47 Charlie Chan mystery films, would prove to be Toller's penultimate turn in the role.