The City of Lights Can Be Pretty Darn Dark

 

1935's Charlie Chan in Paris, starring Warner Oland as Chan, is a strong entry in the series. It's a good, solid mystery with an excellent climax.

Getting to that climax is a lot of fun. Charlie arrives in Paris, ostensibly on vacation but in reality investigating the source of forged bonds. He immediately receives a death threat.

Charlie shrugs this off and soon shrugs off an overt attempt on his life. Charlie is soft-spoken and invariably polite, but he has never scared easily. 

He's soon joined by his son Lee (Keye Luke), which adds in the excellent father-son chemistry that made the Oland films the best in the series. And, though Lee is always comic relief to a degree, he's also a real assett in the investigation, following a suspect and making astute obeservations. I kind of wish there had been a scene in which Lee was present when someone tries to off his dad. Other movies in the series show us that you simply do NOT threaten Charlie Chan when Lee is around. It will not end well for you. That's always fun (and a little touching) to see.

Charlie accompanies some friends to a nightclub soon after arriving in Paris, but his real reason for doing so is to meet up with a dancer at the club. She's been doing undercover work for Chan. But she's murdered before she can tell him anything significant.

There's another murder after that, with a friend of Charlie's being arrested for it. But Charlie knows she's innocent and knows this murder also involves the counterfeit bonds. The crimes are being committed by a scruffy begger. It's not hard for us to guess that the begger persona is a disguise, but each of the likely suspects has an alibi for at least one of the murders.

Charlie eventually puts it all together. Accompanied by a friend, he eventually follows the trail into the sewers of Paris, where a confrontation with the killer is inevitable. Its a suspenseful and satisfying conclusion to the mystery.

The Charlie Chan movies are now on YouTube. I don't know the legal situation, so I can't promise the link below will always be there, but here's a good quality print of the movie: