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.
Review of Charlie Chan at the Opera
