Black Magic

This is mostly a routine Charlie Chan mystery with only a couple of points in its favor. While there are a couple of interesting clues to the crime, the characters, dialogue, and action are all stereotyped or dated, and often dull. The beginning seems to hold some possibilities: a man is murdered at a seance, and although he was apparently shot, no trace of the bullet can be found. The police are baffled, and of course call in Charlie Chan to solve the crime. Charlie is assisted this time not by one of his sons, but by his daughter Frances. Unfortunately, it never really takes off from there.

The phony medium setting offers some opportunities for comedy, but most of those do not work too well. The climax has a bit of suspense to it, and the eventual solution has a couple of creative points in it, but there are a lot of listless stretches to sit through before you can get there.

Overall, "Meeting at Midnight" (or, "Charlie Chan in Black Magic") is not one of the better mystery films around.

The newer films were filled with more silliness. Mantan Moreland became more and more a part of the series. While he was a very funny man, he really only played one note. In this one, a psychic is shot while performing a phony séance. Chan's daughter happens to be at the event and that's how Charlie ends up on the case. The police actually extort him into staying and solving the murder. Mantan, Birmingham Jones, and the daughter are the real investigators. There is a kind of hypnotic drug used and once again we must put aside our beliefs and accept this. Part of the fun is the chicanery that goes on behind the scenes as the credibility of the medium comes tumbling down. I have to admit that our detective has numerous close calls but seems to land on his feet. If you've seen the movie, you'll know how important this is in this film. About average as Chan movies go.

This is my eighth review of a Charlie Chan movie in series chronological order on these consecutive days. In this one, someone is murdered during a séance of which one of the witnesses is Chan's daughter, Frances (Frances Chan). Oh, and the newly hired butler is one Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland)...So instead of one of his adult sons, here Charlie is assisted by his lovely daughter who doesn't get any wisecracks aimed at her unlike her sometimes bumbling brothers, just compliments on her beauty and brains (though hearing the actress occasionally repeat others' lines can be somewhat annoying). With the mystery treated a little more serious here then the previous one called The Chinese Cat, Moreland's antics are also not as frequent but you still get plenty of it in the beginning and the end. As I've said before, his characterization borders on a stereotype that wouldn't do in today's social atmosphere but if you just think of him as a harmless clown that wouldn't hurt anybody, his shenanigans should be amusing enough. Anyway, I highly enjoyed Black Magic (or Meeting at Midnight), and if you love Charlie Chan, you'll probably enjoy this. P.S. Ms. Frances Chan actually appeared as the youngest Chan daughter in a previous entry, now considered lost, called Charlie Chan's Greatest Case. And supporting player Geraldine Wall-who's Harriet Green here-is another one in these series entries I'd like to cite as being born in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill. and that she was originally cast as Dolly Tate in the movie version of Annie Get Your Gun when Judy Garland was cast (in fact, I have a CD of the soundtrack album with her voice tracks on maybe one or two songs) but was replaced by Benay Venuta when Betty Hutton replaced Ms. Garland.

Nervous and bug-eyed Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) "assists" Charlie Chan and his daughter at the murder investigation in the home of a woman who has a séance business. During one of her sessions, a man is killed, and one of six people at the séance table appears to be the murderer.

Moreland was a great comic actor with tons of talent, and he is one of two reasons to watch this film. The other reason is the high-contrast B&W lighting, that reminds me of some 1940's noir films.

Other than Moreland and the film's lighting, "Black Magic" has little to offer. With a runtime of just 67 minutes the story is razor thin and poorly developed, suggestive of a sketchy, hastily written screenplay. There are several plot holes, and the killer's modus operandi is rather far-fetched.

As in many Chan movies, production design is minimal. And the sets here are a little too familiar. The entry hall in the séance house looks exactly like the entry hall used in the Chan movie "The Jade Mask". And the elevator set here looks like the elevator set used in the Chan movie "The Scarlet Clue". But Monogram Studios had the reputation for being cheap. And in this film ... it shows.

Even so, I can see how this film might have appealed to viewers in the 1940s, particularly as a Saturday afternoon matinée feature. In its time it probably was delightfully entertaining and a welcome diversion from the grim business of WWII.

Average Monogram Chan potboiler, in the Mongram House with some of the Monogram staff - but then, I've always liked this one! The surviving print (in Chanthology) is in excellent condition, lending a nice overall atmosphere to the proceedings and helping a lot in following the story. One of the things that always makes me smile watching Monogram's is that the plots usually involve dispensing with some or a lot of accepted social conventions - they weren't meant to be analysed and mulled over decades later. In this Moreland and Frances Chan are in and out of the house like yo-yo's, and creeping all over the place unseen - it wasn't their house but as in a lot of Monogram's you weren't supposed to dwell on ownership issues which obstructed juvenile frisson or slapstick.

At a séance a man is apparently shot dead with what turns out to be an invisible bullet, as Charlie jocularly puts it. The quest is on to find out which of the clients around the table did it and how. The way in which Charlie solved it is depressingly familiar and trite, but everything was wrapped up nicely anyway. As usual Moreland was acting scared witless, in fact with "gremlins galloping up and down his spine" this time - a fantastic image! Frances Chan couldn't act very well but she certainly looked like she was enjoying the experience of making a movie with her constant smiles - her sunny disposition seemed to be rubbing off on Toler too who was enjoying his own aphorisms more than ever.

Overall, nice to watch once in a while especially in a Chan season. And I prefer big shoes to big corns.