The owner of the titular gold mine is marked for murder. Frantic, he turns to ace detective Charlie Chan (Roland Winters, in his fourth of six appearances as Chan) for help. Chan then goes undercover as a vacationer at a dude ranch to investigate. Once there, he happens upon his colleague Lt. Mike (Tim Ryan), who also is looking into some of the shady dealings at the mine. They decide to pool their resources and snuff out the would-be assassin.
We were nearing the end of the line for the Charlie Chan series when The Golden Eye was released. While it lacks the panache of the early entries, it’s still pretty good for the forty-sixth part of a franchise. Directed by William “One Shot” Beaudine in his usual economic manner, the film has the benefit of a memorable locale. The wild west setting and the scenes in the gold mine don’t exactly save the day, but at least they give it a different flavor than many of the Chan mysteries.
As per usual with these late-era Chan films, Mantan Moreland steals the show as Chan’s faithful valet, Birmingham Brown. The highlight comes when he tries to pack way too many clothes into a suitcase. He also figures into the finale where he breaks the fourth wall. This sequence is kind of odd, but it’s sort of welcome after so many drawing room deduction scenes that typically end a movie like this.
While Moreland gets about as many laughs as you might expect, Ryan goes a tad overboard during the scenes where he goes undercover and pretends to be a stumbling alky. His antics aren’t very funny, and he runs his shtick into the ground almost immediately. At least Winters anchors the film with his commanding presence and peppers the proceedings with plenty of fortune cookie wisdom like, “Information sometimes very high-grade ore.”
AKA: Charlie Chan in Texas. AKA: Charlie Chan in the Golden Eye.
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