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 Biggers's novels is not subservient to white characters, citing "The Chinese Parrot" as an example; in this novel, Chan's eyes blaze with anger at racist remarks and in the end, after exposing the murderer, Chan remarks "Perhaps listening to a 'Chinaman' is no disgrace." In the films, both "Charlie Chan in London" (1934) and "Charlie Chan in Paris" (1935) "contain scenes in which Chan coolly and wittily dispatches other characters' racist remarks." Yunte Huang manifests an ambivalent attitude, stating that in the USA, Chan "epitomizes the racist heritage and the creative genius of this nation’s culture." Huang also suggests that