Michael O'Keefe Rather low-budget Monogram Charlie Chan vehicle. Not exactly the worse of the series of mysteries; but a long way from being one of the best. Chan(Sidney Toler)is aboard an ocean liner with Number Two son Jimmy(Victor Sen Young)and temporary assistant Chattanooga Brown(Willie Best). A United States Treasury agent informs Chan that attempts on his life have twice failed and that he is undercover trying to recover a large sum of money and valuable artworks stolen from a Philippine bank. The agent ends up with a knife in his back and Chan will need the man's portfolio to garner clues to his murderer and maybe some info that will lead to the stolen artwork. A typical array of suspects to interrogate. Jimmy and Chattanooga are actually helpful when they stumble over the valuable objects in a fish museum. The murderer will be obvious. Other players: Dick Ellliott, Gloria Warren, Rick Vallin, John Harmon and Joseph Crehan.

xnet95 Most of the Monogram Chan's fall somewhere between mediocre and horrendous, but this one was actually interesting. It had some thought put into it and definitely made the most out of its small budget. One of the previous reviewers said the movie was too claustrophobic. This is one of my biggest complaints about Monogram Chan's, but Dangerous Money does a great job of avoiding that. There are many different sets and scenes on the boat, plus there's the added bonus of all the different scenes on the island, which included some exterior beauty shots. Another aspect of this movie I liked was the absence of Bumbleham Brown. He always seems to take over and dominate the scenes he's in, which usually detracts from the mysterious mood that has been created. In Dangerous Money, Chattanooga and Jimmy Chan are more in the background and less obtrusive. I love the last scene where Charlie strangles his moronic son for almost killing Chattanooga. I wonder if they did that because so many viewers had fantasized about doing it themselves over the years? At certain points, the story is difficult to follow, so make sure you have the remote ready. There are a few things that don't make sense, like why the hell did the criminal gang want Rona Simmonds to come to Samoa? It makes no sense, she could identify the missing objects of art. Did they want her to verify that they were authentic? They obviously didn't do it to lure her to her death because they never tried to kill her. Why did Freddie Kirk contact her father to come to Samoa? Another nice thing about this film is that it is in the public domain. The print that I watched from archive.org was crisp and sharp, with good contrast - black and white at it's best. Also, keep your eyes on Miss Simmonds breasts. I swear that they inflate or deflate as the situation calls for. It's mind boggling.

MartinHafer I wish someone could tell me why Willie Best played 'Chattanooga Brown' in a couple late Charlie Chan films. After all, Mantan Moreland had played 'Birmingham Brown' in quite a few Chan films--why was he briefly replaced? And, did they really think people would just accept 'Chattanooga'?! He wasn't a good addition to 1945's "The Red Dragon" and now he's back for one final appearance in the Chan series...but why?! As for the plot, it's pretty typical. As was often the case, Charlie Chan is on vacation--during which time someone is murdered (in this a US government agent). This time is occurs aboard a cruise ship--also not the first time for this series. So, it's up to Charlie and two bumbling assistants (#3 son and Chattanooga) to solve this case. Considering he always did, it's probably not too much of a stretch to say that once again he'll be successful. So this make you wonder why the criminals didn't just kill Charlie first! Among the many possible suspects is Mr. Burke--played by the very familiar actor, Dick Elliott. Usually, Elliott played bumbling and rather dim individuals--here he plays a slimy and rather dangerous character. But is he the killer or just a horrid little blackmailer and all-around jerk? Overall, this is an exceptionally familiar sort of Chan story...without Mantan Moreland. The only things that set this one apart are that you see Charlie shoot a couple people (though, not surprisingly for a B-film, he never kills any of them--they're only flesh wounds!) and one of the passengers is a cross-dresser!! It's slightly below average in quality, but considering that Chan films are always worth watching, it's still worth your time.

tedg Storywise, this is yet another disposable Chan story, industrialized movie-making.There are two things of interest here.One is how the needs of the Chan franchise ferret out peculiar corners of the American national story. In this case the US was well into the beginning of administering regions in the Pacific. This gave opportunities for new kinds of crime and the novelty of the crime was one of the attractions of the series at this point. So we have the smuggling of colonial currency, an esoteric illegality — and the use of new weapon, a "knifethrowing" pistol.Ho hum. I suppose that will be interesting to historians. But for students of film there's a lesson here too. What do you do if your story depends on matters of race and you want to exploit that but also want to bury it? You fold it into other narrative elements of race.For those who don't know the franchise, it was very long and successful. It stars a white guy pretending to be a Chinese master detective, the acting mostly through a halting English and a few phrases like: "a hasty man can drink tea with a fork." Incidentally, this fits in an odd place in the detective genre because we never really see any detecting, any real wisdom. The only thing we see is him setting traps with the trap revealing the hidden crook. He never figures it out directly.Back to race. Chan's race is hidden twice. First, we have one of his sons as "assistant," a comic, bumbling idiot. This truly is racist and deliberately so. The contrast between the son (played by a real Asian) and his lack of insight and his father is amplified by the physical appearance and the obvious appearance.And this is further folded or shadowed (an appropriate term) by the black guy. He is placed as far from the son in all dimensions as the son is from the father. He is that much more comic, and independently clueless, and also independently "ethnic." Its a vile notion to exploit by today's standards, but the method of shadowed folding is clear.Its a device used in literature, but much more common in film because you can link so many more qualities in parallel, here all aligned to "detection" qualities. That Africanamerican's name is Chattanooga, derived probably from Jack Benny's "man" Rochester.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.