TCM has collected the final three Sidney Tolan Charlie Chan movies and one with Roland Winters in this week's Charlie Chan Collection. All four see their DVD debut here, leaving only a couple Chans unreleased. The movies are entertaining, in an absurdist context in addition to as a relic of a more oblivious era. It is good that we saw actual Asian actors cast as his sons.

Charlie Chan is still so controversial that Asian groups have prevented previous DVDs from coming out and have stalled a franchise reboot set to star Lucy Liu for ten years. I'm kind of split on him. On the one hand, he was probably the only early 20th century portrayal of east Asians that could be considered positive. On the other, he comes off as smart yet worse at English grammar than Yoda, and he's always happy to serve the white people that are positioned as his superiors all-around. Actually, Chan's "broken english" is performed less like someone who primarily speaks another language, but rather, like someone who didn't like their lobotomy and went back for a second.

The fact that Chan was originally played by Asian actors is often passed over, too. Those movies weren't successful at all. It took casting Swede Warner Oland to see franchise success. Oland died, and Scotsman Sidney Toler took over the role. Then he died, leaving the role to Roland Winters. What a curse!

The set includes Dark Alibi, Dangerous Money, The Trap, and The Chinese Ring. Amazon's got it for $28.49 (around $7 each).