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After an attempt on his life, businessman Kramer (Lowell Gilmore) hires
Charlie Chan (J.Carrol Naish) to investigate. The case takes an unexpected
turn rather immediately though when Kramer and Charlie find Kramer's wife
Marcia gone, kidnapped. Charlie picks a trail up almost immediately that
leads to a painter, Patton (Liam Sullivan), who Kramer's secretary Ms
Parsons (Virginia Gregg) tells Chan Marcia had an affair with. Charlie
can't find anything that ties Patton to the case though. Then a tape from
the kidnapped Marcia is found, urging her husband to pay up ... but
Charlie is quick to find out the tape was actually recorded on Kramer's
recorder, which means the whole thing must have been an inside job by
Marcia and ... At the money handover, Chan can identify Patton as the
one receiving the money, but when he follows him to his hideout he
ultimately finds him leaning over Marcia's dead body. For the police, it's
clear that he murdered Marcia, and Kramer makes Chan's interference
responsible for her death ... until it's found out that she was actually
murdered hours before Chan found her and even before he actually appeared
on the scene - which puts Patton's guilt into serious doubt - after all,w
hy would he return to Marcia's corpse after he had received the money
instead of hightailing it? Chan tells both Kramer and his secretary he
expects to find some clues to the identity of the real killer in the
bungalow where Marcia's body was found - and both swallow the bait. In the
end, it's revealed that it was Ms Parsons who killed Marcia because she
was in love with her boss and thought Marcia was ruining him, but now
Kramer wanted to kill Ms Parsons for killing the love of his life -
fortunately though, Chan manages to interfere just in time to save Ms
Parsons' life but also see to it that she gets her just desserts. For
a half hour television murder mystery from the 1950's, this first episode
of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan doesn't look too bad
(even if J.Carrol Naish doesn't look like much of a Chinaman), it's
well-scripted, well-paced, sombre in tone and slick in direction. However,
while this episode has much going for it, it also fails to properly
convince, basically because it's not all that much of a Charlie Chan-story,
all the typical trademarks (however annoying they might be at times) are
sadly missing, from Chan's endless "excuse please"s to his
constant use of Chinese proverbs to all the comedy that made the film
series (not so much the books of course) so memorable. Chan as he is in
this could just be whoever of whatever nationality or race - which might
be more politically correct than earlier depictions, but a whole lot less
fun!
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