The ONLY surviving pre-1934 Charlie Chan film that stars Swedish actor (and the best Charlie Chan) Warner Oland. It’s lucky for us that this one didn’t get mulched because it gives us a rare chance to see Bela Lugosi not play a vampire, a murderer or a mad scientist. He is a crystal ball-wielding psychic so he’s still a little weird, but relatively harmless as the confidant of a murdered Hollywood starlet. Enter Charlie Chan to sleuth his way to the identity of the killer and speak in goofy aphorisms. It’s a tight little mystery with a few plot holes so glaring that they’ll blind you, but what else is new in 70-minute B-movie detective stories?
Based on the mystery novels of Earl Derr Biggers. Shot on location in Hawaii.