Black Magic (1944)

"Shady business do not make for sunny life.", 24 July 2015

During a séance, a man is murdered. He was shot, but there is no bullet. One of the participants in the séance, Frances Chan, just happens to be the daughter of the great detective Charlie Chan. Charlie decides to postpone his return to Honolulu to help with the investigation and clear his daughter.

I've rated this a 5/10, but honestly, Black Magic is probably not really that good. I've read the other reviews that praise Black Magic as being the best of the Monogram Chan films. But it's still a Monogram film, so that's really not much praise. I have no way of knowing this for certain, but Black Magic appears to be one of the better funded Monogram films I've seen. Again, this is Monogram, so that doesn't mean much either. The drop-off in quality from a Fox B-film to a Monogram film is quite noticeable. 

There are a lot of other negatives. The story in Black Magic seems all too familiar. If I'm not mistaken, this is at least the third case in the Chan series involving séances or similar hokum. There's really no new ground covered here. As much as I am a fan of Mantan Moreland, a little goes a long way. His jokes grow repetitive the longer the film goes on. Speaking of the film going on, at only 67 minutes, it still drags. The pacing is all off. Finally, maybe it's just me, but Sydney Toler seems to have lost that spark or twinkle in the eye he had in earlier Chan films. He just looks old and tired.

5/10