People are voting emotionally.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

"The Sky Dragon", the final film in the Charlie Chan series, is described as the "nadir" of the series by Leonard Maltin and given a BOMB rating in his book. Now, I haven't seen many Chan films (yet), but this cannot be the worst when it is in fact better than another one which I saw only yesterday, "Golden Eye". It opens with a rather unusual setup (a murder, plus the robbery of a quarter of a million dollars, aboard a plane), and if it had stayed on the air it might have been a much-needed change-of-pace. It soon (crash)lands on earth, and becomes deadening at times, but at least it returns to the scene of the crime in the last 10 minutes for a traditional gathering of the suspects and unveiling of the culprit(s), and there is some cleverness in way the robbery is carried out (though the main killer is obvious). It's a movie only for the most dedicated buffs of the mystery genre, and they may get some fun out of it. My favorite Chan line: "Tired man's idea like children's nightmare: easily dispelled by light of day" ** out of 4.

The Charlie Chan series ended with The Sky Dragon in which murder and a robbery are committed in a passenger airline while in flight. The ultimate of locked room homicides. Unfortunately for the ones who did this caper they had Charlie Chan and son Lee on board. After that they hadn't a chance.Roland Winters and Keye Luke bring in Tim Ryan of the SFPD who is more than happy to assist the local authorities. Pilot Milburn Stone and co-pilot Joel Marston and hostesses Noel Neill and Elena Verdugo are also suspects. Gracing the cast as she always does is Iris Adrian playing a burlesque queen who was a passenger. She's traveling with brother-in-law Lyle Talbot on a mission of her own.The guilty party is one who is rather quick on the trigger. In that it's easy to figure out who it is. How the robbery was done was a bit more clever and it involves an accomplice or two. Keye Luke who was number one son while Warner Oland was Charlie Chan returns for the final film. I had the pleasure of seeing Keye Luke on Broadway in the original cast of Flower Drum Song, my first Broadway show. Ironically he played a traditional Chinese father in that show.If they had only put a real surprise in the ending this would rate a notch or two higher. As it is The Sky Dragon is a fine film to conclude the series.

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!"

Spoilers herein.Yes, this stuff is racist, and poorly produced to boot. But originally, the idea was to annotate the game of detection - that strategic movement between writer and reader - with Chinese sayings. Those were really pretty apt, both so far as the mystery and the denoting of wisdom. In the hands of a good writer, it was innovative and useful. In the hands of a hack, its Saturday morning skit quality.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.