A tomb is opened in the Valley of Kings, an archaeologist dies quickly, another disappears, and artifacts from the tomb begin appearing mysteriously on the black market. Charlie Chan is called in to investigate the whole business by the French archaeological society. Everybody looks suspicious except the pretty young woman and Stepin Fetchit as "Snowshoes", who claims to be descended from Ameti, the recently disinterred King.
Actually, what the French Archaeological Society has to do with anything is just as big a mystery. Egypt was in British hands at the time, and they shouldn't have been fiddling around with three-thousand year-old tombs either without the most careful supervision, which was never provided.
I lost the thread of the narrative once or twice because my attention drifted and the plot is a little convoluted, but I enjoyed the mumbo jumbo and the fake ghosts and the violin with the deadly gas concealed in its belly, encased in thin glass designed to shatter when the instrument emits sound of a certain frequency.
Stepin Fetchit wasn't very amusing. The stereotype wasn't bothersome. Mantan Moreland appeared in some of the later episodes and was often quite amusing. It's just that Fetchit has little to do and nothing funny to say. Rita Hayworth appears in a secondary role but you'd never recognize her if you didn't know who it was. Her hairline was far lower at the time. Not as bad as the wolfman's, but you know what I mean. It peaked down the middle of her brow and had yet to be electrolyzed or electrocuted or whatever it is that Hollywood does to permanently remove hair and restore its line to where they believe Nature intended it to be.
I kind of like stories like this about ancient Egyptian tombs -- the narrow passageways, the confusion of multiple rooms, the profusion of hieroglyphics, the fake ghosts gleaming in the darkness, the underground streams. I wish they'd worn pith helmets.
The pyramids had uncountable numbers of corridors and shafts going this way and that like a carnival maze. Some years ago, after the invention of fiber optic photography, an investigator ran a tube a few dozen yard up a dead-end shaft that was square and about a foot in diameter. Of course there was nothing IN the tiny shaft -- except a few dangling threads of an old spider web. No one has explained what the spider was seeking at that depth, or why the spider was stupid enough to look for anything at all in a dead-end three-thousand-year-old granite-lined shaft.
Actually, what the French Archaeological Society has to do with anything is just as big a mystery. Egypt was in British hands at the time, and they shouldn't have been fiddling around with three-thousand year-old tombs either without the most careful supervision, which was never provided.
I lost the thread of the narrative once or twice because my attention drifted and the plot is a little convoluted, but I enjoyed the mumbo jumbo and the fake ghosts and the violin with the deadly gas concealed in its belly, encased in thin glass designed to shatter when the instrument emits sound of a certain frequency.
Stepin Fetchit wasn't very amusing. The stereotype wasn't bothersome. Mantan Moreland appeared in some of the later episodes and was often quite amusing. It's just that Fetchit has little to do and nothing funny to say. Rita Hayworth appears in a secondary role but you'd never recognize her if you didn't know who it was. Her hairline was far lower at the time. Not as bad as the wolfman's, but you know what I mean. It peaked down the middle of her brow and had yet to be electrolyzed or electrocuted or whatever it is that Hollywood does to permanently remove hair and restore its line to where they believe Nature intended it to be.
I kind of like stories like this about ancient Egyptian tombs -- the narrow passageways, the confusion of multiple rooms, the profusion of hieroglyphics, the fake ghosts gleaming in the darkness, the underground streams. I wish they'd worn pith helmets.
The pyramids had uncountable numbers of corridors and shafts going this way and that like a carnival maze. Some years ago, after the invention of fiber optic photography, an investigator ran a tube a few dozen yard up a dead-end shaft that was square and about a foot in diameter. Of course there was nothing IN the tiny shaft -- except a few dangling threads of an old spider web. No one has explained what the spider was seeking at that depth, or why the spider was stupid enough to look for anything at all in a dead-end three-thousand-year-old granite-lined shaft.