Here's the last of the Charlie Chan discs. It's got the last three Roland Winters Charlie Chan films. There would be another Mexican Chan film in 1955, then Ross Martin would play Chan in the 1973 The Return Of Charlie Chan and lastly Peter Ustinov would play Chan in the 1983 Charlie Chan And The Curse Of The Dragon Queen. I saw the Ustinov film just recently and it's just so awful I can't even talk about it. If you see it on dvd, buy it, break it, throw the parts into the river, toss the cover into the trash, keep the case, you know, in case you need it.
The Feathered Serpent was directed by William Beaudine and it came out in January 1949. Charlie and his two sons, Lee (Keye Luke) and Tommy (Victor Sen Young in his last Chan film), are on vacation with their pal Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland). They find a missing archologist. He tells a fantastic tale and is soon murdered. A search party is organized to rescue the team members who are still lost. The Chan clan tag along. They soon figure out what is going on and catch the criminals. There's the usual crime solving yammering and comedy bits.
The Golden Eye came out in August 1948 and it was directed by William Beaudine. For some reason the films are out of chronological order on this disc. There's gold smuggling and murder in the west. Charlie, Tommy and Birmingham Brown. The guys are in Arizona and they're undercover. Of course they find the criminals and put them in the can. It's not too bad but like the last of the films in the series it's barely average. They are still watchable but Winters just isn't as interesting a Chan as the guys he replaced were.
The Sky Dragon was released in May 1949 and it's got Charlie and Lee getting knocked out on an airplane. There'd been a murder while they snoozed. They'll figure it out and put the guy away but only after several murders. It's sadly a better film than the other two and then the series is over. I was entertained by the series and glad I picked it up.
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