The Scarlet Clue

1945

Mystery

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 42% · 4 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 42% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 1672 1.7K

charlie chan

Plot summary

Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan discovers a scheme for the theft of government radar plans while investigating several murders.

Director

Phil Rosen Photo
Phil Rosen

Top cast

Charles Jordan Photo
Charles Jordan as Nelson
Frank Mayo Photo
Frank Mayo as Det. Hodge
Leonard Mudie Photo
Leonard Mudie as Horace Karlos
Virginia Brissac Photo
Virginia Brissac as Mrs. Marsh
720p.WEB
596.28 MB
960*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
29.97 fps
1 hr 4 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Spondonman 7 / 10

Won't let you down

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.
Reviewed by Doylenf 6 / 10

Sidney Toler moves to Monogram for this one...

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."
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