Excellent adaptation.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

However grateful I am that there does exist a copy of the script and this recreation (on the third installment of Charlie Chan DVDs) I can't say much great about this one. Using mostly stills and ill cast "actors", this one entry doesn't strike me as a particularly good one, Earl Derr Biggers contributions or not. It is probably more faithful to the books and having struggled through reading those, I can tell you that I much prefer the celluloid Chan to the literary ones.What really struck me as odd was that the actor doing the Warner Oland role sounded as though he was trying to sound like Sidney Toler whom I always found to be an inferior Chan with his "chopstick" delivery of lines and obvious makeup.Still, it's kinda cool to have some sort of version existing at all.