ENTERTAINMENTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 109, 18 February 1937, Page 10

ENTERTAINMENTS.

ST. JAMES THEATRE. • , When a man believed long dead, turns lip in his family home only to be struck down by an assailant’s knife, Warner Oland is called in to solve the mystery. How he tracks down the killer through a fascinating maze of clues and at the risk of his own life is revealed in the Fox thriller “Charlie Chan’s Secret,” at the ,St. James Theatre to-night and at two sessions tomorrow. San Francisco is the scene of Chan’s activity in the new picture. Hurrying from Honolulu where he had expected to find the body of an heir to a large fortune in a shipwreck, he arrives to join the family of the man in a spiritual seance. In the middle of the seance the body of the man is suddenly and terrifyingly thrust through a trap door. Clues point to the spiritualist, to- the family lawyer, to the victim’s own family. Further attempts are made on the life of Chan and on the victim’s aunt. The spiritualists flee after having trapped Chan. When they are recaptured, Chan decides to re-enact the seance of the previous day. It is here in a gripping, tense and breathless climax that Chan pits his wits and courage against those of the killer, and finds a. satisfying solution to the crime. MAJESTIC THEATRE. “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” showing at the Majestic Theatre tonight and to-riiorrow night, is a murder mystery. This is the fourth of the popular novels by Erie Stanley Gardner to be brought to the screen by the same producers with Warren William starred as the brilliant amateur detective, Perry Mason. The plot is unique, baffling, and the suspense is maintained up - to the moment of the amazing climax. There are two possible motives for the murder—to coyer a. love scandal—and to gain possession of the wealth. Perry Mason’s problem is to find which is the real cause of the crime. Eight persons are suspected, one of whom believes herself to be the killer. Circumstantial evidence points to the probability that Perry Mason himself did the deed. The hero is injected into the case by the pistol method—just as lie is starting on his honeymoon—by the wife of the man who is marked for slaughter, and who has laid herself open to suspicion through a secret love affair.