Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise is a 1940 murder mystery film starring Sidney Toler in his fifth of many performances as Charlie Chan. It is based on the Earl Derr Biggers novel "Charlie Chan Carries On". The famed detective seeks to unmask a killer on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean. As has been mentioned elsewhere, this story is primarily a remake of the (now) lost movie, "Charlie Chan Carries On," (1931) starring Warner Oland. The story has been updated to include more Charlie, but it would be nice to have the missing movie to compare against.
Charlie Chan such as Fu Manchu, while simultaneously emphasizing supposedly Chinese characteristics such as impassivity and stoicism. Biggers wrote six novels in which Charlie Chan appears: The first Charlie Chan film was "The House Without a Key" (1926), a ten-chapter serial produced by Pathé Studios, starring George Kuwa, a Japanese actor, as Chan. A year later Universal Pictures followed with "The Chinese Parrot", starring Japanese actor, Kamiyama Sojin, in the starring role. In both productions, Charlie Chan's role was minimized. Contemporary reviews were unfavorable; in the words of one reviewer, speaking of "The Chinese Parrot", Sojin plays "the Chink sleuth as a