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On a flight to San Francisco Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is on, a man
(Louis Jean Heydt) dies from poisoning. What makes this matter delicate is
that he was a crime writer who planned to bust a large blackmail operation
wide open with his upcoming novel. The manuscript goes missing though ... Chan
decides to investigate the murder, also because he was a friend of the
dead man, even if San Francisco is slightly out of his jurisdiction. The
one clue Chan has is a radiogram that mentions a certain Doctor Zodiac
(Gerald Mohr). Turns out Zodiac has two enemies, magician Rhadini (Cesar
Romero) and journalist Peter Lewis (Douglas Fowley), who want to expose
Zodiac as the fraud he is and thus team up with Chan. But Zodiac also has
lots of followers including Rhadini's own wife (June Gale) and Lewis'
fiancée Eve Cairo (Pauline Moore), a scientifically proven mindreader. After
much to and fro and even attempts made at Chan's life, he, his bumbling
son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), Rhadini and Lewis break into Zodiac's house,
find a safe full of files on people Zodiac obviously blackmails (here's
where the novel of the dead writer fits in)with information gathered in
his seances. Chan decides to burn the files to spare a lot of people a lot
of embarrassment, but at Zodiac's place, he finds something else out: The
Zodiac persona is just a disguise that even includes a full facial mask,
which means virtually anybody could be Zodiac, even a woman. Chan and
Rhadini decide to challenge Zodiac to a magic duel in front of a
live audience, basically to expose him for good, and though Zodiac has
nothing to win and everything to lose at the duel, Chan figures he's much
to egocentric to not show up - and indeed he does, and is murdered right
away. Once unmasked, Zodiac turns out to be his own Turkish servant
(Trevor Bardette) - but that leaves one question open: Who killed Zodiac? Chan
decides it's best to totally reconstruct the situation, and now Rhadini,
who has been performing a magic trick during Zodiac's murder, is wounded
by a knife. Chan is faced by a packed room full of suspects, and thus he
uses mindreader Eve Cairo to expose the real killer - which she can't but
the killer exposes himself when he tries to kill her, and it's ... Rhadini
himself, who has used some magic tricks to both kill Zodiac and injure
himself without anyone noticing, but what's worse, he has actually been
Zodiac all along and has only tried to expose Zodiac as a fraud to
completely divert any kind of suspicion. He gets his just desserts in the
end of course ... By the way, the writers death is ultimately explained
away by suicide via poisoning. Douglass Dumbrille plays a red herring,
an insurance salesman who in the end turns out to be an insurance
detective on the side of the police. Ok entry into the Charlie
Chan-series in which mystery and comedy are carefully balanced
out, and the occult dimension only adds mystery to the ... mystery.
However, the culprit is easy to spot from early on (even if he appears
together with Zodiac in an early scene) and the mindreading finale is a
bit naive and unbelievable. Still, ok entertainment.
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