The texture of this movie is as lumpy as the crunchiest peanut butter. The problem lies partly in the conventional 1930's Hollywood wisdom that audiences couldn't be trusted to sit through 60-70 minutes of suspense and sleuthing unless you provided comic relief. Too often, as here, the comic element was totally extraneous to the story. Enough has been said by other commentators about Stepin Fetchit's unwelcome presence. Stupid, lazy, and cowardly, his "coon" stereotype was the answer to a white supremacist's dream. More to the point, he isn't even very funny here. His character fits in with Warner Oland's Charlie Chan like oil and water. One anticipated comic scene in which the bazaar merchant shows SF the long-lost tomb of his "ancestors" fails to materialize. (If it was ever shot, it probably ended up on the cutting room floor.) Paul Porcasi's fastidiously polite Inspector Fouad also seems superfluous. One longs for the presence of Keye Luke in this movie, as the best humor in the Charlie Chan series always came out of Charlie's natural interaction with his sons.
The other problem with Charlie Chan in Egypt is thin plotting. Why should Professor Thurston need to kill his nephew Barry and attempt to kill his niece Carol with the mysterious drug "mapuchari" when he has already hidden away the treasures of the 21st Dynasty in a secret room? It seems that Charlie is not given enough clues to go on when he reveals Thurston as the murderer. Actually, the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, seems to point to the major-domo Edfu Ahmad, played by the sinister-looking Nigel de Brulier. As a direct descendant of the High Priest Amete, he has a vested interested in saving his tomb from desecration by foreigners. And what is a teenaged Rita Hayworth doing here as the servant girl Nayda, peeping through the shrubbery as Charlie investigates Barry's murder? Is she is league with Edfu Ahmad, or merely getting some screen exposure while adding her decorative presence to the proceedings? Also, the complicity of the chemist Daoud Atrash is not made clear. He claims ignorance of the drug mapuchari, but is he on the level? If Atrash didn't provide Thurston with the drug, who did? In the last analysis, this is not among the the strongest films in the Chan series due to its unevenness. This in spite of the truly eerie tomb setting, which recalls the chills we got in no less a picture than the original Boris Karloff classic The Mummy.
The other problem with Charlie Chan in Egypt is thin plotting. Why should Professor Thurston need to kill his nephew Barry and attempt to kill his niece Carol with the mysterious drug "mapuchari" when he has already hidden away the treasures of the 21st Dynasty in a secret room? It seems that Charlie is not given enough clues to go on when he reveals Thurston as the murderer. Actually, the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, seems to point to the major-domo Edfu Ahmad, played by the sinister-looking Nigel de Brulier. As a direct descendant of the High Priest Amete, he has a vested interested in saving his tomb from desecration by foreigners. And what is a teenaged Rita Hayworth doing here as the servant girl Nayda, peeping through the shrubbery as Charlie investigates Barry's murder? Is she is league with Edfu Ahmad, or merely getting some screen exposure while adding her decorative presence to the proceedings? Also, the complicity of the chemist Daoud Atrash is not made clear. He claims ignorance of the drug mapuchari, but is he on the level? If Atrash didn't provide Thurston with the drug, who did? In the last analysis, this is not among the the strongest films in the Chan series due to its unevenness. This in spite of the truly eerie tomb setting, which recalls the chills we got in no less a picture than the original Boris Karloff classic The Mummy.