Sky Dragon (1949)

Disturbing yet enthralling

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

After almost four dozen films, this was the final installment in the Charlie Chan series from Twentieth Century Fox and Monogram Pictures. Like the final six, this one starred Roland Winters as the detective...and his version of Chan was far weaker than the one played by Warner Oland as well as Sidney Toler. The story begins on an airliner. Chan and #1 son, Lee (Keye Luke), are aboard and things seem pretty normal. After all, Charlie had just finished a case and they're heading home. However, something evil is afoot....and Lee realizes it when he awakens to find everyone either asleep or dead! One of the pilots was stabbed and someone obviously knocked everyone else out by lacing the drinks with something....and a fortune in money being transported in the plane is gone!Like all the later Charlie Chan films, this one is weak...but still watchable. Roland Winters simply isn't as fun as Sidney Toler and the solution to all this was telegraphed. When baddies all 'accidentally' get shot and killed by the same person, it doesn't take Charlie Chan to figure out they are evil! Fair...at best.

Also known as MURDER IN THE AIR, this is the sixth Chan film starring Roland Winters. To be exact, this is the last in the Charlie Chan franchise that began at Fox Films about 19 years earlier with Warner Oland playing the American-Chinese detective from Honolulu. The series pretty much began declining in substance and popularity when Winters took over for Sidney Toler as Chan in 1947. This film has Charlie on board a flight to San Francisco with #1 son Lee(Keye Luke)and his bug eyed chauffeur Birmingham Brown(Mantan Moreland). Before arriving at their destination passengers and pilots are drugged and upon waking up an insurance courier is found dead and the quarter-million-dollars he was carrying is missing. Winters is lackluster in performing his duties as the honorable detective. Moreland provides some rib splitting comic relief as usual and Luke gets to fly the plane to the closing credits. (Did they not plan this to be the end of the series? You would figure the lead character would close out the string of murder mysteries). Also in the cast: Milburn Stone, Noel Neill, Tim Ryan and Lyle Talbot. Ah so, Charlie Chan.

It's too bad that Fox hadn't continued on with the Chan series as they could have made an excellent movie with a small amount of rewriting of this script. Sidney Toler had done his best to "rescue" the 11 Chan movies he made for Monogram before his death – but Winters is simply a cartoon of Chan in the 6 movies that he made, including this one. This vehicle was a sad ending for the Charlie Chan series, first started by Fox with healthy budgets allowing excellent movies that audiences enjoyed throughout the world. But then degraded substantially after Monogram entered the scene with their miniscule budgets (Tolar was unable to raise enough capital on his own to continue the series after Fox dropped the series).Regarding the childish "racist" comments from others: My wife, an RN with a Masters Degree, was born and raised in China, moving here to the U.S. in her late 20's. We have collected all of the known Chan movies, and she thoroughly enjoys the Oland and Tolar movies for what they are – interesting, provocative detective episodes. When I asked her if she felt the movies were racist, she firmly stated that people making those statements obviously don't understand the world as it was when these movies were made. They should be enjoyed for what they were meant to be. Her actual final comment was that "it's too bad that people like that can't seem to grow up and get a life!"

"The Sky Dragon" would be the last of the Charlie Chan mystery films, this one starring Roland Winters who appeared in a total of six films as the Oriental Detective. Keye Luke, who first appeared as Number #1 Son Lee in 1935's "Charlie Chan in Paris" opposite Warner Oland, appears here in a much more mature characterization. So much so, that this is the only film in which Charlie is called "Dad" instead of "Pop" by any of his offspring.The movie involves an insurance scam aboard a San Francisco bound airline flight, on which all the passengers are drugged, with the perpetrator making off with a two hundred fifty thousand dollar bundle. Chan must make his way through a host of suspects among the passengers, before ferreting out the guilty party with Lee's help impersonating an injured (actually dead) pilot.Notable among the cast are Tim Ryan in his third Chan appearance as Lieutenant Mike Ruark of the San Francisco Police Department; and future Daily Planet Reporter Noel Neill as an airline hostess. For trivia fans, her TV Superman counterpart George Reeves also appeared in a Charlie Chan film, 1941's "Dead Men Tell", as of all things, a newspaper reporter! For his last appearance in a Chan film, Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown doesn't have much to do, although he does get physical at one point, helping Lee wrestle down a gunman confronting Charlie.Like many Charlie Chan films, it helps to keep a scorecard to track the characters and their relationships. "The Sky Dragon" has enough going on to keep you guessing, although in the end it's a rather average entry in the Chan series.