Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Charlie Chan in Panama is also a remake, but not of a Chan picture this time or even a Biggers book, but of Marie Galante (1934), a Jacques Deval novel, screen-played by Reginald Berkeley. While he cannot compete with Spencer Tracy, Toler handles his secret serviceman with customary stoicism, while the lovely Jean Rogers (her Kathi Lenesch somewhat uneasily combines two roles) certainly gives Ketti Gallian and Helen Morgan a run for their money. Sen Yung, of course, has the Ned Sparks knockabout part, while Frank Puglia steps very, very neatly into Leslie Fenton's shoes. While it cannot be compared budget-wise, this entry certainly has its share of excitements. Admittedly, director Norman Foster is nowhere in the same class as Henry King, but he keeps his film moving along with both pace and style. The action spots are handled with finesse and even Chris-Pin Martin's labored comedy relief comes over as reasonably amusing. In fact, viewers who have not seen the Tracy version will have little to complain about.

Another good Charlie Chan mystery with the detective being involved with murder, espionage and sabotage in Panama. Going undercover as a seller of Panama hats he has to discover who is the spy Ryner who is pulling the strings. Panama City is paranoid about spies but Charlie in his measured and intelligent way untangles the real from the false. Helping and hindering him is number two son Jimmy. The ending is suspenseful and surprising. Norman Foster directs with a steady hand.Sidney Toler is very good as usual as Chan and Sen Yung is lively as his son Jimmy. They are supported flawlessly by Lionel Atwill, Mary Nash, Chris-Pin Martin and Jack La Rue to name just a few of the fine cast. Chan utters several great Chan-isms as usual. Sixty-seven minutes of absorbing entertainment.

****SPOILERS*** Charlie Chan, Sidney Toler, working for the US Government as undercover hat store owner Fu Yean works against time in finding out and preventing a sinister plot to sink the entire US Atlantic Fleet while docked at the Panama Canal. This is being planned by a number of German saboteurs in what seems like Nazi Germany's efforts, in early 1940, to get the US involved in WWII! This making FDR's, in running for re-election that year, job a lot easier. That by him getting the American people who were as much as 95% against it,at the time, to go along with him in getting the US into WWII.It's Charlie's bumbling #1 Son Jimmy, Victor Sen Yung, who after messing things up for Charlie ends up saving his life in preventing, by hitting him with a tobacco can, one of the saboteurs from assassination his pop. It's when Charlie along with #1 Son Jimmy and a number of the cast, including the head Nazi saboteur, are trapped in a cave that he realized were the explosives, a two gallon bottle of nitroglycerin, was hidden: at the Panama Canal power station.***SPOILERS*** Breaking out of the cave and heading for the power station to prevent a catastrophe from happening It's the saboteur him or herself who ended up exposing himself in knowing just what kind of explosive was to be used. Something that only Charlie the police and the saboteur himself could have known. As usual as in most pre-WWII movie before the US got involved in the saboteur's identities or nationalities were kept from the public. But it didn't take a genius to figure who they were working for with the pretty Jean Rogers playing a refugee from fascism with the Slavic sounding name Kathi Lenesch being from a Nazi occupied, Poland or Czechoslovakia, at that time country.

Among the war propaganda motion pictures made during the II World War, "Charlie Chan in Panama" is one of the best, and a fine entry in the Charlie Chan series, with Sidney Toler in the leading role. It is a likable and very amusing recreation of Panamá in the 1940s (and I may say rather accurate), with the Canal Zone US military bases, the swinging life of night clubs in the city of Panamá, the seedy port "cantinas" in the colonial section of the city, its Chinatown section, and the characteristic presence of people from all over the world, a trait still present today. Chan does not disappoint, as he works for the US Armed Forces and tries to discover who is trying to destroy the Panama Canal. A remake of "Marie Galante", much better than the original.