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Actually, Charlie Chan (Roland Witners), his number one (Keye Luke) and
number two sons (Victor Sen Yung) and his driver Birmingham Brown (Mantan
Moreland) are on their way to Mexico City for a vacation, but then they
stumble upon a half-dead man (Erville Alderson) dragging himself through
the desert, take him to the next town to drop him off at the doctor, meet
up with an expedition that was going to search for him and his colleague,
professor Farnsworth (Leslie Denison) - and then the man Chan and company
have picked up is killed right under their noses ... Chan of course
decides for him and his party to join the expedition, especially since he
suspects the murderer to be one of the participants. The expedition is
set to search for professor Farnsworth who in turn was searching an
ancient Aztec temple, and is made up of Farnsworth's sister Joan (Beverly
Jons), her fiancé professor Stanley (Robert Livingston), her best friend
Sonia (Carol Froman), Stanley's colleague professor Evans (Nils Asther),
singing cook Pedro (Martin Garralaga), and guide Manuel (Charles Stevens). At
first, the expedition doesn't come up with anything of substance, but then
one night Chan secretly follows guide Manuel to a clearing where he just
disappears, and is later almost killed for his efforts, only to be saved
by cook Pedro, who's actually an undercover agent for the Mexican police. Manuel
by the way is actually part of a ring of smugglers who have found the
Aztec temple and want to steal its treasures before the gouvernment can
lay a claim on it, but thgey can't find the temple's entrance, which is
why they hold professor Farnsworth. The leader of this ring is professor
Stanley, and their hideout is a secret cave at the clearing where Chan has
lost Manuel. The next day, Chan and his clan investigate the clearing
further and somehow Birmingham stumbles into the secret cave and is made
the smugglers' ring's prisoner. Stanley meanwhile takes his own fiancée
Joan hostage to finally force the secret of the temple's entrance out of
Farnsworth - but somehow in the end Chan and his sons manage to make their
way into the cave, and witht he help of police agent Pedro and his men,
they manage to set a few wrongs right ... And interesting Charlie
Chan film for a number of reasons: a) it marks the return of
Number One Son Keye Luke after a hiatus of a decade, b) it is the only
film that features both of Chan's most popular and most persistent sons
Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung, and c) because it was based on a very
unusual source, the Three
Mesquiteers-western Riders
of the Whistling Skull from 1937 - in which Robert Livingston, the
villain of this film, played one of the good guys. Of further interest
might be that it is one of the very few Charlie Chan-films
that reveals its killer very early on (to the audience at least), about
halfway through the film, rather than pulling him out of the hat in the
last minute. All of this of course says very little about the actual
quality of the movie in hand - and what can I say, The Feathered
Serpent might not exactly be a great film, not even within the Charlie
Chan-series, but it's an ok crime-yarn with touches of adventure
that moves along swiftly enough to entertain and is garnered with enough
comedy so typical for the series as such.
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