Charlie Chan in the Secret Service
I'm a hugh Sidney Toler fan. I've got almost all the Charlie Chan videos he has made,and enjoy watching them when I am in a nostalgic mood. I highly recommend these videos to mystery fans!

An Awkward Chan Mystery...
1944's "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service" features Sidney Toler as the famous Honolulu detective, now seconded to the Secret Service for the war. He is assisted in this episode by Number Three Son Tommy (Benson Fong), Number Two Daughter Iris (Marianne Quon), and Driver Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland). Together, they must solve the mystery of how a top scientist dropped dead in a house full of guests while the plan for a secret weapon went missing.

Chan, in conjunction with his Secret Service colleagues, confines the rather eccentric collection of guests to the house while he conducts his investigation. The investigation seems to consist of Charlie leading the guests from room to room for questioning while he slowly unpeels a rather ingenious series of murder traps. None of the guests are quite who they claim to be, and through a series of experiments, Charlie weeds the crop down to an unlikely suspect.

This is a rather awkward episode. The plot and dialogue are clunky, while the direction rarely missed an opportunity for stagey melodrama whether through a rising music score or shots of an unidentified eye peering from cracked doors. Tommy, Iris, and Birmingham are only rarely able to provide the comic relief that would become standard later in the series. This is not the best entry in the Charlie Chan collection, and will appeal primarily to diehard fans of the series.

An early entry but very good
Of course, I'm awarding this film five stars specifically to benefit Chan-Nazis like myself in deciding where this one fits in, rating-wise, alongside all the others.

I enjoy Sidney Toler (which this one is) and Warner Oland Chan films equally and I place this particular entry in the top 30 percent of them all. "Castle in the Desert" stands far and above ALL the rest, in my opinion, and then you have "Charlie Chan in The Jade Mask," which rates just above this entry, "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service". I see this one as about evenly equal to "Charlie Chan in Reno," or to "Charlie Chan and The Wax Museum".

In "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service," a renowned scientist is under full-time guard by G-men who foolishly allow the old man to go off by himself downstairs in his large home to greet guests for a cocktail party. Of course, he meets his demise in a closet near the bottom of the stairs and his valuable plan is stolen from his person; however, the G-men are quickly downstairs and on the guests before anyone can flee the scene. Charlie is called in to find both the murderer and the stolen plan.

The guests represent a strange and eccentric aggregation of humanity, (a brilliant cast), and the viewer is pointed first toward one, then towards another of them as the possible culprit. Mantan Moreland yields his usual great performance, providing his obligatory comic relief.

This is a Charlie Chan film worth watching by anyone who enjoys the older black-and-white whodunnits, (such as the old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films), but it's a special treat for Charlie's many fans.

Solid Performances by Sidney Toler,Mantan Moreland and Benson Fong in Mediocre Film
I like CHARLIE CHAN IN THE SECRET SERVICE although I agree with some of the other reviewers that this low budget movie has many obvious shortcomings.For the Chan fan it is still an entertaining entry about a scientist who dies mysteriously in his home which is full of house guests.His plans for a new torpedo are missing and the guests are the leading suspects in both the theft of the plans and the possible murder of the scientist.Charlie Chan is called in as an agent of the Secret Service to assist in the case.

Sidney Toler plays the part of Charlie Chan and he is joined by Benson Fong as Tommie Chan and Marianne Quon as Iris Chan. The cast also includes the excellent comic Mantan Moreland.

The producers were Philip N. Krasne and James S. Burkett. The director was Phil Rosen and the screenplay was written by George Callahan.

Cheapest of the cheap Chan's
An inventor of a new weapon is being doggedly protected by government agents. He tells them to back off as they are an insult to his guests. He keeps the plans safe in his pocket. We see ominous eye pears out of the shadows. We know that any minute our scientist will be shot or stabbed. He drops dead. Yep they call in Inspector Jones (Arthur Loft) who in turn calls in Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler).

The props look like cardboard and toys. The background music is atrocious as they try to build up suspense and only make you wish this was a silent movie. They must have dug Sidney up from the grave; he is falling apart and his sneer look more like a grimace. The characters are not and you spot the obvious perpetrator.

The only mystery is how the inventor died. No fair guessing.