Dangerous Money (1946)

“Hasty man could also drink tea with fork.”  1 May 2020

A US Treasury Agent, hot on the trail of some “hot money”, is murdered aboard a sea liner headed for Samoa.  Conveniently, Charlie Chan is on board.  He naturally takes over the case and is faced with a boat load of suspects to weed through to find a killer. 

I’ll keep this short and sweet because, overall, Dangerous Money is fairly lackluster, below par entry in the long running Charlie Chan series.  This was Sidney Toler’s second to last outing as Chan and he looks tired.  The twinkle in his eye so evident in earlier Chan films is gone.  He looks like someone who’d rather be doing just about anything else than playing the same old character.  As for the film itself, other than the promising ocean liner setting (I always enjoy a mystery on a ship), a few good scenes at the beginning, above average production values for a Monogram film, and Gloria Warren, there’s really not much to recommend.  I’ve always found the mystery in Dangerous Money a muddled mess.  There are no real clues for Chan to follow.  It seems that he does more wild speculating based on no real evidence than any real detective work.  He’s aided by bumbling son Jimmy and sidekick Chattanooga.  They literally stumble into the solution to the mystery.   

I’m not sure how this movie has the rating it does on IMDb.  I can’t see giving it more than a 4/10.

4/10