Charlie Chan in Rio

Good mystery film about the famous detective Charlie Chan. He's in Rio to put under arrest Lola. But she's murdered before he can arrest her. Interesting murder case follows and like other Charlie Chan's movies, an array of suspects are in the room. Everybody seems to have a perfect alibi.

Good performance by Victor Sen Yung who plays Number Two Son. Toler is once again good in the role of Charlie Chan. Funny remarks here and there punctuate the script. Like this one: «This is very exciting». The lady to answer: «So is parachute jumping, but I don't like it».

Like other films in the series, lights go out for a second or two and there's one dead person!

Out of 100, I gave it 77. That's **½ on a four stars rating system.

Seen at home in Welland on VHS. Marko Roy - May 13th, 2001.

I've just seen Charlie Chan in Rio for the first time and found it enjoyable like all of the Chan movies I've seen.

In this one, Chan and his No 2 son are in Rio to arrest a murderer but she is then murdered herself, so he leads the investigation for this. After gathering clues including drugged cigarettes, the murderer is revealed...

This includes a couple of rather catchy songs and No 2 son learning to dance.

Charlie Chan is played well by Sidney Toler and is joined by Sen Young, Richard Derr and Victor Jory.

If you like a gold old mystery, then you will like this. Excellent.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

As others have pointed out, this is a remake of The Black Camel, which itself was one of the original Chan stories by Biggers. If you've seen the earlier film, then of course you know the twist by which this one is solved - which of course is very disappointing. Were people really not paying attention between the two versions of this story? Harold Huber gets to play a policeman straight this time, which is a big improvement over the usual clowning he was required to do in other Chans. Son Jimmy intrudes on the story too much for me, as usual, but doesn't express the worst of his pop-eyed hammyness in this one. There's not much Rio here, as others have complained, but this is a B movie, not a travelogue. The ladies are lovely, there's a musical number, and Jimmy gets an action scene near the end. All in all, quite good.

This film is a remake of the Warner Oland film, "The Black Camel". This is a short, at one hour, fun film. But it doesn't compare to the original. We do get to see Jimmy Chan dance in a night club in the opening. Victor Jory has the role played by Bela Lugosi in the original. Harold Huber is another police detective. It's good. But see "The Black Camel" first.

Despite my summary, I DID like this film. It's just that despite its title, the film looked like they stuck in some stock footage and everyone in the film spoke English. Plus, oddly, the Brazilian police inspector spoke MUCH better English than Charlie--he remembered to use all his definite articles (such as 'the')! This isn't a major problem about the film, but it is kind of funny.

The plot involves the murder of a woman who is already wanted for murder. The rest of the film is just about what you'd expect from a Charlie Chan film made by FOX--Charlie's son (in this case #2) is a bumbling and obnoxious assistant, there are twists and turns and many different suspects, and in the end, Chan catches the murderer. No major surprises, but it was a bit odd seeing the wonderful magic potion developed by the psychic--just smoke one of his special cigarettes, drink a bit of coffee and you almost instantly fall asleep and tell the truth! If only this were true--imagine the fun you could have with your friends! This is a completely average outing for the series--not bad, nor especially compelling. For fans, it is pretty much what they'd expect and for the non-Chan fans out there, probably not enough to make them love the series.