|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
A Chinese princess (Barbara Jean Wong) is killed in Charlie Chan's
(Roland Winters) home of all places, and just before dying the has enough
life left in her to put down the words "Captain K". Chan and
local police Sergeant Davidson (Warren Douglas) investigate and soon find
not one but two Captain Ks among her acquaintances, Captain Kelso (Thayer
Roberts), the man she wanted to buy warplanes for her brother back in
China from, and Captain Kong (Philip Ahn), who was to smuggle these
warplanes back to China on his boat. Davidson is certain the killer was
one of these two, but he just can't find evidence against either. Chan
meanwhile is not so sure and follows up a few other clues, one of which
leads him to local bank president Armstrong (Byron Foulger), whose
institute shows certain irregularities when it comes to the deposits and
withdrawals of the princess' account ... Then though it's revealed that
Captain Kelso's a phony and has never owned any airplanes he could have
sold to the princess, and that Captain Kong might have been in on this,
and to top it all off, Kelso and Kong take Armstrong - who they think
cheated them out of the money they wanted to cheat the princess out of -
and Chan captive, to take them out to the high seas and get rid of them
for good. It's only thanks to Chan's chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Mantan
Moreland) that the police gets on their tail and searches Kong's ship just
in time to save Chan and Armstrong and in the process arrest Kong and
Kelso. The killer though is in the very end revealed to be neither of them
but Armstrong, the only man who would have really profited from her death
... The very first movie starring Roland Winters as Charlie
Chan - and to be quite honest, he looks even less Asian than
Warner Oland or Sidney Toler. Anyways, the film as such - a remake of Mr
Wong in Chinatown from 1938 - is rather solid entertainment, it's
decently paced, doesn't lose itself too much in unnecessary subplots or
comic interludes, and has a certain light-footed note to it. Sure, all of
this makes no genre classic, but that's probably not what a series-film
like The Chinese Ring was intended to be, right?
|