Very disappointed :(

Dreadfully Boring

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

"The Docks Of New Orleans" (don't expect to see much of New Orleans, by the way; the production values are depressing) presents a potentially intriguing locked-room murder mystery, but the method of the murder turns out to be an almost exact copy of "Mr. Wong, Detective" (the Boris Karloff movie), and the murderer is fairly obvious after a point. The film is a mostly dreary affair, but one long sequence near the end, with Chan held at gunpoint by three villains and trying to stall for time, is well-done. Number Two Son and Birmingham Brown have very small parts this time around. My favorite Chan line: "Only important that you do not underrate me when we part". ** out of 4.

Fans of the Charlie Chan series may notice right away that Victor Sen Yung (#2 Son) is named 'Tommy' instead of 'Jimmy' as he'd been in many films before. Somehow, he was re-named Tommy late in the life of the franchise and no one seemed to notice or care. In many ways, this is a metaphor for the overall health of the series--no one seemed to particularly notice or care that the series was on cruise control, of sorts.Another thing fans will probably recognize is the overall lack of fun in this film. Since the death of Sidney Toler, the next films all seemed very dry--even with the support of Mantan Moreland. It really just seemed as if the writers didn't mind that the films lost a lot of the 'fun factor'.The plot of the film involves three men who agree to share a company. However, when they start to die off one by one, it is assumed that the surviving partner(s) are at fault. A rather routine story and so I'm not really going to discuss it further but it sure is obvious there's more to the killings. In the end, Charlie talks and talks to explain the convoluted plot, though because this is such a low-energy and adequate film, I think my review should be the same and I'll just stop here. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Docks of New Orleans has one scene that makes the whole movie worth watching. Number Two Son Tommy Chan and chauffeur Birmingham Brown decide to play a duet of ' that old Chop Suey Boogie', with Tommy on violin and Birmingham on piano. The look on Charlie Chan's face as he hears the off key tune from another room, while trying to solve the murder mystery, is priceless.Spoilers ahead: The clever ending, with a captive Charlie Chan tricking the bad guys into believing they have been trapped in a room filled with odorless poison gas, is quite amusing. Roland Winters brought a very low key wit to his portrayal of Chan, which serves the character well; as Charlie frequently reacts to the outrageous events around him with one raised eyebrow and an air of humorous resignation at the idiocy he must contend with, from both dopey policemen and his enthusiastic assistants. This is one of the lesser films in the long running series, but fun for Charlie Chan devotees.

This is a Roland Winters' Monogram made Chan flick. It is a remake of their earlier "Mr. Wong, Detective". Neither version is very exciting. Winters is a very weak Chan, at best. Only Victor Sen Young and Mantan Moreland brighten the film. This is one of the films that has Young playing "No. 2 Son Tommy"! He used to be "No. 2 Son Jimmy". Tommy was Benson Fong and No. 3 Son. It is sort of an ongoing blooper in the later Monograms.