The Worst Film Ever

Better Late Then Never

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Theft of radium from a bank vault, a jukebox containing a camera, and a switchboard supervisor that understands Morris code figure into this murder mystery featuring Sidney Toler as the inimitable Charlie Chan. The story follows the same whodunit theme as other Charlie Chan mysteries. And I wish I could recommend this film; but I can't.The script is poorly written. I about tore my hair out trying to figure out who's who with these various story characters and how they related to each other, if at all. Suspects are poorly defined. There's very little suspense here. The plot is somewhat mangled with unexplained occurrences. Some unnecessary scenes could have been either shortened or deleted.The B&W lighting also is not high quality. Though the noir atmosphere at the very beginning is atmospheric, the lighting is so dark the viewer can hardly distinguish character faces in outdoor scenes. High contrast lighting is also too severe in underground segments.The "cobra" is actually a person that inflicts a small cigarette lighter device containing poison into the victim. It's an imaginative plot hook, but hardly realistic. Beyond that story hook and a couple of funny Birmingham character scenes, the poor script and outdoor lighting render "The Shanghai Cobra" below average in the Charlie Chan series of whodunits.

Back in the days before the American entry into World War II, Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan had occasion to arrest a man accused of a nasty string of killings involving use of cobra venom. That individual escaped. But when in America just post World War II, the same modus operandi turns up in a string of homicides in the same urban vicinity, Toler knows its The Shanghai Cobra at work again.Toler's hunt for The Shanghai Cobra now involves him in a case where the Feds have a serious interest. The Cobra plans to steal some radium stored in a bank vault for the usual nefarious purposes. With the questionable help of Number 3 son Benson Fong and chauffeur Mantan Moreland, Charlie of course solves the mystery. Not without a few twists in it, like a jukebox with a television camera inside it. Television development was put on hold during the war years and it was still an object of wonder to the public. Also of course the ways The Shanghai Cobra does deliver death is interesting.One thing though did bother me. You would think that such a man might seek an alternative type poison, lest his work attract the attention of people like Charlie Chan. Cobra venom poison is kind of unique in America, even today.In any event though, The Shanghai Cobra is not a bad mystery and it is that because you will be crossed up in the end if you think you've identified The Shanghai Cobra.

Director Phil Karlson gives this Charlie Chan mystery the Film Noir treatment. Otherwise, business as usual with Sidney Toler playing America's favorite Hawaaian detective. Chan is summoned to investigate several murders concerning wartime radium. A group of bank employees where deposits of radium is held for safe keeping mysteriously die. It appears each has been injected with deadly cobra venom. Chan remembers a similar case that happened earlier and the only clue he has is a man with a white streak down the middle of his otherwise jet-black hair. You can always depend on Tommy Chan(Benson Fong)and Chauffeur Birmingham (Mantan Moreland)to provide comic relief. You can't go too wrong with a Chan movie. Other players: James Cardwell, Joan Barclay, Walter Fenner and Addison Richards.

In 1937, Dan Van Horn was arrested in Shanghai for a murder in which the bite of a cobra was implicated. Van Horn escaped, never to be heard from again, although it's known that his face was badly burned in an accident.It's now eight years later, and three employees of the Sixth National Bank have turned up dead, all identified as victims of the "Cobra Killer". The bank contains stores of radium for laboratory and hospital use, and is the center of all the skullduggery. As we've seen before, Inspector Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is alternately aided and confounded by his assistants, Number #3 Son Tommy (Benson Fong) and chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) - "You remain here until I find doghouse big enough to hold both of you". There are just enough characters and victims here to need a scorecard, and truthfully, that's about the only way one can follow the action. Add to that the device of moving a laundry storefront one door down from it's original location to further confuse the investigation. Van Horn (alternately referred to as "Dan" and "Jan"), is eventually revealed to be bank guard John Adams, who with his undercover daughter Paula Webb, have trailed the real Cobra Killer to the United States in an attempt to clear his name. The cobra device turns out to be not one, but two different gimmicks - a poisoned needle on the knob of a coffee shop juke box, and a similar set of needles on a cigarette lighter used to dispatch a detective working the bank building. The real Cobra Killer is a chemical engineer with an office at the bank, but as usual, his identity is only revealed at the end of the film, with only his profession providing a clue to the mystery. The Shanghai Cobra is a nifty entry into the Charlie Chan series at Monogram (this is the 6th film), but view it with some suspension of belief, as any number of the scenes and elements in the film rely on a stretch of the imagination.