Castle in the Desert (1942)
Charlie Chan, with son Jimmy on a week's pass from the Army, takes up a request for help at a castle-home, miles from anywhere in the American desert south-west and inhabited by an eccentric, reclusive historian and his wife, a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia. Once there, he finds the request's legitimacy denied by all who are present, but still necessary as one houseguest has already been murdered, the other guests are at each other's throat, and the Borgia-related chatelain is suspected...
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The Age of Commercialism
Fantastic!
Absolutely brilliant
The acting in this movie is really good.
The movie was definitely a mystery throughout the production, as people died but did not actually pass, but one person was brutally stabbed well into the film. Red-herrings abounded when Chan arrives to greet the cast of guilty parties, some innocents and some eccentric, and there was Jimmy, caught up in the plot as usual. Greed, once again, was a factor, coupled with prejudice, racism, and references to a Shakespearean work. This was a well written story, played out professionally by the entire cast, and it kept the viewer guessing until the end. First there was the plan to discredit the host and hostess which was a hinderance to the actual killer, the really greedy individual, having to extinguish the original perpetrator in order to gain the ultimate goal of taking over a vast estate. The plot is definitely complicated by the remote castle without a phone or electricity, and soon there was to be no method of transportation. There is a murderer in a castle without communication, transportation of electricity, all with loads of red-herrings. Charlie does an excellent job solving multiple crimes, i.e. fraud and felony going hand-in-hand. Charlie has no additional police assistance while he is conquering the many obstacles in the pursuit of a happy ending. You have to watch for characters appearing, counted as deceased, then reappearing in disguise to actually aid in capturing the killer. For Twentieth Century Fox to close out the eleventh of eleven films as WW II was underway, this was one above par for the Saturday afternoon crowd. Kudos to Toler and cast for bringing the film along at a well-paced effort and keeping everyone in suspense. Recommend a watch for the intrigue set namely in a familiar interior setting.
Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is summoned to a mysterious castle in the Mojave Desert where a bizarre masked man (Douglas Dumbrille) lives with his wife, a descendant of the famous Borgia family. There are also several other guests at the castle. When one of them is poisoned, Charlie must investigate with meddlesome son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung).The last of the 20th Century Fox Charlie Chan films is one of the weirdest. The plot, at its heart, is a simple old dark house mystery. But the setting here, a castle in a desert, is different enough to keep things somewhat fresh. Also the eccentric characters help out a lot. It's an enjoyable entry in the Fox series. Not the best or worst but somewhere in the middle. Sadly, the quality would drop considerably when the series moved to Monogram a couple of years later.
Wow does this movie have a weird and confusing setup! We are expected to believe that some freaky distant relatives of the infamous Borgia family (circa 15th century Italy) are maintaining the family name and have built a huge mansion dedicated to the family--complete with a huge poison collection AND torture chamber! And, the head of the family runs around with a giant towel over his face because he apparently is disfigured!! To make this worse, this home was supposedly built in the Mojave Desert (the home used for the film actually was there and is apparently a famous landmark--thank you Steve S. for alerting me to this)!! These elements together show that the writers at Fox were running out of serious ideas. Not surprisingly, this is the last film in the series before it moved to Monogram Studios two years later.The film begins with a man being poisoned at the family mansion. Just because she was named 'Lucretia', people automatically assume that this lady killed this man and the next poisoning victim. Great logic, eh? Well, naturally Charlie Chan gets an invitation to the place and he begins to unravel the clues to get to the truth. There's a lot more to the film than this and several surprises about the poisoning victims, but I don't want to divulge these and ruin the film.Overall, it's diverting and fun but also quite stupid if you think about the plot. It's among the very worst of the Fox series--and not a great ending to their series.
Considered by many as the best of the Chan's this is possibly the one I like the least. The plot has Chan answering a call from someone needing his services and going alone to the title location. When he arrives he finds that a poisoner is on the loose. For me the film is all about the location, the huge sets of the castle are spectacular, however the plot gets lost in the empty halls. Its not that the plot is bad, its just there isn't enough to sustain the running time of about an hour. Even Jimmy Chan's appearance fails to add any sort of life to the proceedings. As much as I watch and rewatch the other films this is one I watch the least, doing so when ever it happens to come up on its no infrequent TV airings.