Charlie Chan In City In Darkness (1939)

When Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) heads to Paris for a reunion with his WWI friends, he finds Paris plunged into darkness as Europe teeters on the brink of war. He stumbles on a spy ring that's selling arms to Nazi Germany when a well known millionaire (Douglas Dumbrille) is found murdered. Based on a play by Gina Kaus and Ladislas Fodor and directed by Herbert I. Leeds. Earl Derr Biggers' creation Charlie Chan was a popular character in the cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. CITY IN DARKNESS was the 24th Chan film and the fourth starring Toler as Chan. It's one of the weakest of the films in the Chan franchise principally because of the heavy comedic element which reduces much of the whodunit to a silly farce. The chief offender is Harold Huber as an incompetent bumbling police detective (think Inspector Clouseau). The character is ill conceived and not amusing in the slightest and the in a film dealing with Europe on the brink of WWII, the clownishness is downright offensive. Even the solving of the murder isn't very interesting. With Lynn Bari, Leo G. Carroll, Pedro De Cordoba, Richard Clark, Dorothy Tree, Ann Codee and Lon Chaney Jr.