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Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely brilliant

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

Some supposedly bad folks live in a castle in the desert. We are privy to a murder, when a man who has had some friction with the principle characters, dies from a poison drink. Meanwhile, Charlie and Jimmy receive a cryptic message to come to the castle. The family, which are supposedly descendants of the Borgias, are shunned by their neighbors. Charlie gets someone to take him there against the wishes of others in the town and not long after that the number two son shows up like a bad penny. It turns out that this is one weird family. A private detective shows up shortly after and he is poisoned. I rather enjoyed the bleakness of this as well as the skeletons in the closet of these persons. It was quite entertaining.

This is my sixth review of a Charlie Chan movie in which I go through them in chronological order of when they were made for these consecutive days. This was also the last one made for 20th Century-Fox before the series moved to Monogram, two years later. In this one, Chan goes to the title place after a couple of murders had occurred. One of the family members there is a descendant of the infamous Borgias...Starts off well enough but by the end, I was a little confused by some of Charlie's explanations of what happened. Also, I didn't find many of his exchanges with "No. 2 son" Jimmy all that funny though his wisdom proverbs are still pretty amusing. So on that note, Castle in the Desert is worth a look and nothing more. P.S. I actually noticed a blooper when one of the "statues" moved when Jimmy came closer to him!

This is the only Charlie Chan I threw in the waste basket, but that's because I was disgusted with all the pro-astrology message in this film. For those who could care less about that, this will be another entertaining Chan mystery. For the rest of us, this was disappointing.Normally, Chan debunks these "stargazer" figures in his films but, for some reason, in this movie the astrologer is given total validity. Everything she predicts comes true so Chan gives her respect. It was amazing how many times the occult was presented in classic-era movies. Since the Code restricted profanity, nudity, anti-clergy bias, etc., one of the ways these could still get anti-Biblical messages across was through all the occult nonsense. This is just one more example.This was Sidney Toler's last Charlie Chan before switching studios, adding Mantan Moreland to the cast and making the last of the films a lot more humorous (or stupid, depending on what you prefer). Moreland was funny as "Birmingham Brown" but he also was demeaning to the black race with his role. Regardless of the stories or the cast, Charlie Chan always remained smart, funny and a good family man, and his films (including this one) are always entertaining.