Hitchcoc Despite there being plot deficiencies all over the place, this is still fun. Once again, Charlie is called in because of goings on in the defense department. There is a murder early and the circumstances are confusing. It turns out there is some sort of central figure pulling strings as a group of gangsters carry out the instructions of this man. He communicates with a teletype machine so they don't recognize his voice. Anyway, it's the usual group of suspects, this time the cast of a radio show. We are also give a look at that new medium, television. Mantan Moreland and his vaudeville partner do their wonderful sketch where they finish each other's sentences. Tommy Chan is such a windbag and gets the full treatment from his father, although he does find some serious evidence. I liked this one quite a bit.

Neil Doyle THE SCARLET CLUE is a fairly interesting Charlie Chan film from the '40s, depending on its humor for the performances of BENSON FONG as #3 son, MANTAN MORELAND as Birmingham Brown and BEN CARTER as Ben Carter. The mysterious deaths of people associated with a radio program that is a front for some sort of radar secrets espionage, is at the heart of the crimes Chan must solve.SIDNEY TOLER was beginning to show signs of fatigue (he died two years later) and the sets and production values are noticeably reduced from what they were when the Chan films were being made by Fox. During the TCM showing of the film, Robert Osborne mentioned that it was Toler himself who brought the idea of furthering the Chan adventures to another studio after shopping the idea around.VIRGINIA BRISSAC, JACK NORTON, JANET SHAW and HELEN DEVERELL are among the chief suspects. I recognized Miss Brissac from her performance as the hard of hearing Miss Seiffert from THE SNAKE PIT. She has quite a different role here.Enjoyable fluff, not one of the best in the Chan series but a respectable enough entry from Monogram.Favorite line: When son #3 tells his dad that he has an idea but then immediately forgets what he wanted to say, Chan replies: "It's now in solitary confinement."

Michael O'Keefe Methodical Charlie Chan feature. Little suspense. No intrigue. But, I still find it cool to watch. Chan is called on to investigate the murder of a suspect in a plot to steal top secret information concerning the Government's planned use of radar. The investigation takes Chan to a radio station, where he has a studio full of suspects and knows one of them is a killer. But who...the station manager(I. Stanford Jolley), a soap opera owner(Virginia Brissac)or maybe one of two actresses(Janet Shaw and Victoria Faust). Helpful or not, Charlie has the help of one of his sons(Benson Fong)and his comical chauffeur(Mantan Moreland). Right away we know that Chan's first major clue is a shoe print. But, there are others of course...this is a Charlie Chan mystery isn't it?

Spondonman This was a nice entry in the Chan series [32/38], with Charlie, Tommy and Birmingham in fine comic form. The rest of the cast displayed no sense of humour at all.Charlie was still working for the Government this time after a gang of murdering agitators who were after radar secrets from an "experimental" radio, television and radar broadcaster. They don't write radar shows like they used to ... A nice touch was that a suspect (who was responsible for the original apparently indelible clue) was last seen on the 2nd floor of the radio building, found dead on the 10th after falling from a great height. Convoluted! The sets were used thoroughly in the previous film The Jade Mask, the gas chamber being turned in this into an ante room for a weather chamber. Moreland excelled himself with this one, with endless solo wisecracks or even as part of a double act. Was it unacceptable in Hollywood back then for him to have taken his taxi driver cap off as it would have made him appear an equal?A good Monogram Toler plus Moreland film, even if with more ridiculous intricacies in the plot than usual.