Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

JohnHowardReid Fortunately, director Harry Lachman's interest in the Charlie Chan series was revived by "Dead Men Tell". Lachman had considerable input into designing the elaborate sets. Alas, although his work is wonderfully eerie, not a great deal of it is actually visible on the screen because, when actual filming began, he encouraged photographer Charles G. Clarke to shoot the picture mostly with spooky close-ups. However, it must be admitted that this ploy is highly successful and that all the players acquit themselves well.In fact, there are fans who regard this entry with all its noir effects and intriguing plot, as actually the very best of the whole series.

blanche-2 "Dead Men Tell" is an enjoyable Charlie Chan mystery from 1941. People gather for a treasure hunt via ship to an island, based on a map an elderly woman, Patience Nodbury, inherited from her ancestor, a pirate named Black Hook. Since someone has attempted to steal the map, she's divided it into four pieces and gives three pieces to three passengers.Patience says that Black Hook visits each relative before they die, and Black Hook visits her, all right, but in this case, he kills her. Charlie and Jimmy want to solve her murder, and they have plenty of suspects. There's a man posing as a reporter, Bill Lydig (George Reeves), a neurotic man, Gene LaFarge, who has a psychiatrist with him, and the captain, Captain Kane, whose ex-partner left him to do on a deserted island.Dark, atmospheric film with Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) in trouble most of the time. Toler has an authoritative presence as Charlie. He's less whimsical than Warner Oland, and his gruff voice gives his line readings a nice sarcasm. He tells Jimmy "Save alibi for your autobiography." One thing I noticed is, though these films have been criticized for not being politically correct, in the bar scene, no one calls Jimmy derogatory names. They make fun of him, but no one acts as if he looks different. In fact, I have never picked up anything like that in any film, directed at Charlie or one of his children. It seems to me that these are films of their time, which make them un-p.c. by today's enlightened standards, but the writers never meant to be deliberately insulting. Just an interesting thought, as the days of casting someone Chinese as Chinese were a long way off.

bkoganbing Charlie Chan arrives at a docked charter boat to retrieve his absent from college number 2 son Victor Sen Yung. But the murder of the woman who was in charge of the charter Ethel Griffies plus another of her passengers keeps him there. Good thing to have the best homicide cop around for a solution even though the second murder is committed during the investigation.As it turns out in Dead Men Tell the late Ms. Griffies was the descendant of a pirate who hid treasure somewhere nearby. The various passengers on her charter all will share in the treasure as they aid in the finding. Only one of them gets a bit greedy. What he and Sidney Toler are looking for are pieces of a treasure map that Griffies gave to the other passengersBesides the passengers is a mysterious and Eugene O'Neill like creation of a captain played by Truman Bradley. Bradley has project he's working on all his own.Dead Men Tell is a good enough Charlie Chan feature. Sadly it repeated one gag one time too many. It got less funny every time Victor Sen Yung fell in the water.

Jim Tritten Patience Nodbury has a treasure map worth $60,000,000 that has been handed down from her pirate ancestor `Black Hook.' Someone has already tried to steal it and she cuts it into four, sending three pieces to other members of the Cocoas Island Treasure Hunt Cruise. As Charlie Chan arrives on the sailing ship Suva Star, Patience meets her long-departed ancestor (complete with peg leg and hook for a hand) and she succumbs from a weak heart. `Trouble like first love, teach many lessons.'Most of the rest of the film is set aboard the Suva Star (in port) where Charlie and his `favorite son' Jimmy set about to discover who would frighten a little old lady to death. The set is well constructed and presents an eerie location. Good camera work with lots of spooky shadows.A good array of possible suspects includes George Reeves (later Superman on TV) and since the old sailing ship used to be a pirate museum, it provides an interesting array of props. Jimmy Chan provides good comic relief and spends a good deal of the film in the harbor having even walked the plank. When Jimmy offers to help guard and wants Charlie's gun, Pop responds with `Bullet from killer much easier to take than bullet from #2 son.' Milton Parsons skulks around as an interesting character that is trying to over come psychoses. A talking parrot `Gerdy' helps Chan unravel part of the mystery.There are plenty of clues and they come fast, but this is the first Chan film that I have seen where the detective does not neatly wrap it up at the end and tell you what you should have seen or at least what he knew that you did not know. Unless the version I saw was cut (it might have been), Chan does not reveal how he knew the identity of the killer at the summation. But, there is one good clue and you might catch it. Fair but I liked this one better when I saw it as a kid.