That was an excellent one.

One of my all time favorites.

Let's be realistic.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Excellent Charlie Chan film with great cast. An insane opera singer escapes from a sanitarium with revenge on his mind. This man, played by Boris Karloff, who is never given his due as a fine actor, had a horrible experience which has left him mad. He wants to sing again. The police are on the lookout for him and Charlie Chan is assisting. William Demarest plays a racist pig of a detective who calls Charlie names like Chop Suey among others. Charlie is ten times as smart as this guy. Meanwhile, at the opera, there are all kinds of intrigues going on. There is a jealous husband, a pair of strange lovers, a young couple who are hanging around for some reason, Charlie's son,who spends most of the movie wearing a helmet as part of the opera chorus along with his fraternity brothers, and a bunch of prima donnas. At the beginning, I thought this was going to be really idiotic, but then Karloff took over and Warner Oland's Charlie, ignoring the racist comments, takes over the case, using wonderful forensics. These are very good B movie mysteries.

Fans of Charlie Chan, Boris Karloff or both should find little to dislike about Charlie Chan at the Opera. Count me as someone who likes Karloff a great deal and gets a fair amount of pleasure watching the Charlie Chan film series. The general consensus is that Charlie Chan at the Opera is one of the best of the series, and it is a consensus that I agree with wholeheartedly. If there is anything that didn't work very well, it was that that Boris Karloff's singing was dubbed very obviously with the sloppy lip synch and the singing voice sounds very little like Karloff when he speaks(Karloff probably did have some singing talent, but there is a lot of truth in what has been said already that he probably wouldn't have been an actor if he was THAT good). Tudor Williams does dub him brilliantly though, the dark velvety quality(that is fairly reminiscent of the great baritone Lawrence Tibbett) of his voice makes him captivating and thrilling to listen to. That aside, the film is very pleasing to look at, well shot with effectively used settings. The Mephistopheles costume was really striking and Karloff looks very imposing(he always did though) in it. The music is grandiose, playful and beautiful, the opera Carnival was composed especially and it is well-utilised and is one that you wish made appearances on the opera stage. Apart from the lip-synch, Karloff is still very good here, he is charismatic and formidable but clearly knows how to have a good time. Warner Oland is spot-on as a character that suits him to a tee, in particular he really relishes his hilariously droll lines and it shows in his sly delivery of them. The dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny, Charlie Chan's lines are like little bon bons and you have to love the nod to Karloff and one of his most iconic roles. All the acting is very good though. The scenes with William Demarest are every bit as fun as those with Karloff and Oland. The mystery parts of the story are well-paced, have good amounts of suspense- not too obvious or predictable- and keeps your "little grey cells"(in the words of Agatha Christie and her immortal creation Hercule Poirot) working, complete with some great atmosphere. Overall, non-stop entertainment from start to finish. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Another day. another Charlie Chan mystery. This time, Walter Orland is paired up with Boris Karloff, an interesting combo to be sure, as Chan tries to figure out who bumped off a pair of philandering opera singers(!!) Boris Karloff is, of course, prime suspect #1, as he is cast here as a crazed opera singer who just escaped from the looney bin lusting for revenge on the people who tried to kill him in an opera fire many moons ago! This one is a bit strange with it's premise, so therefore it's fun as Chan tries to make sense of it all. Karloff looks to be having a ball in this strange casting as an opera singer, he lip syncs horribly. I think he knows his fans know it, so just adds to the fun.

Generally considered the best in this series, and I would agree that it's up there somewhere. Boris Karloff (the screen credits read: "Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff" -- cute!) is a mental patient with amnesia who escapes the sanitarium when he remembers that he was formerly an opera singer who was once locked in his dressing room during a fire and left for dead. He then returns to the opera house to sing again and settle a score, with the famous Charlie Chan on the murder trail.A brisk and enjoyable installment, playing up big Karloff's infamous reputation as a bogeyman, yet I have to say he sometimes comes off as humorous while mouthing the words to the dubbed opera vocals. Though his contemporary rival, Bela Lugosi, is often slammed for overacting, Boris is no slouch himself in this department here, over-expressing and hamming it up all over the place. Charlie's number one son Lee (Keye Luke) is somewhat underused this time, for some reason. In his place seems to be William Demarest, who is entertaining in this movie, running around as a frazzled American cop also struggling to solve the case and keep up with master detective Chan (Demarest does his own stunts which includes one really impressive comedic fall). With Demarest's occasional quips toward competitor Chan, it felt like this particular entry was more heavy on the "Asian stereotype charge" than usual. But in the end, it's still Charlie Chan who remains most respectable and more brilliant than everyone else. *** out of ****