Charlie Chan in Shanghai

Charlie Chan arrives in Shanghai and a senior official is killed at a dinner held in his honour. Chan and his son Lee go after the case, and the trail soon leads to an opium smuggling ring. The seventy-one minute film follows the serial-mystery pattern of its day: a closed circle, a handful of suspects, the explanation delivered to everyone at the end. What gets talked about most in the series today is the casting: the Chinese detective is played in make-up by Warner Oland, born in Sweden, which is to say a white actor in an Asian part. Keye Luke, who plays his son Lee, really was of Chinese descent and was one of the few Asian actors working in Hollywood in those years. James Tinling directed.