Watch Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen For Free

Truly Dreadful Film

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ok. One of my all time favorite movies. Silly, pointless, aged stereotypes but just silliness from start to finish. Don't go in expecting a cinema masterpiece, just enjoy!

This is a satire of America's favorite Hawaiian detective, Charlie Chan. You immediately know something is wrong when you notice Peter Ustinov is playing Chan. The famous detective is called out of a deserved retirement to solve a murder in San Francisco and confronts his old enemy the Dragon Queen(Angie Dickinson). Another plot is saving the life of his Jewish-Chinese grandson(Richard Hatch). A pretty good line-up of stars take part in this movie that just is not any good. Among the cast: Lee Grant, Brian Keith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rachel Roberts and Roddy McDowall. Calling this a witty satire is stretching actuality.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit to having seen Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen in the theater during its original run. I hadn't seen it since and when I found the DVD on sale for less than the price of a rental, I decided to give it another chance. Big mistake! It's as bad as I remembered. I suppose that the movie was an attempt to cash-in the success of Murder by Death, another comedy featuring fictional but famous detectives as its central characters. By that's where the comparisons end. Murder by Death was brilliant. That movie was intelligent, witty, and filled with biting dialogue as its comedic base. In contract, Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen relies on juvenile slapstick to get a laugh. While there are a few moments that brought a smile to my face, as a whole, it's just not funny. And, there's nothing intelligent about any of it. What a wasted opportunity!

This is the perfect example of how not to make a Charlie Chan film--or any film for that matter! It was meant as a comedy--but it's not funny. The mystery is lame. The acting is awful. A good cast wasted by a terrible script! Peter Ustinov is better than this and should have said "No!" to this one. A big waste of time and money. Only for absolute Chan fanatics and then only so they can say , "Yeah. I saw it." To paraphrase from a much better Chan film, "Bad film like dead fish--can not stand test of time!" See any of the 20th Century Fox Chan films from the 30's and early 40's instead.