The 'Feathered Serpent' from the title is a reference to Quetzelcoatl, the Aztec reptile god. This is appropriate since the film is set in Mexico and is about evil doers who are trying to steal Aztec treasure. As usual, Charlie Chan and his entourage (including #1 and 2 sons as well as Birmingham Brown) is on vacation when murders start taking place around him. First, they find Professor Scott dying and they rescue him...only to soon have an unseen hand bury a dagger into Scott! Considering Scott is a member of a missing expedition who was investigating a lost temple, it's a good bet this and further mayhem are the work of some folks trying to steal the treasure for themselves. However, instead of just making deductions, this one ends with Chan and his party catching the baddies in this temple...baddies who seem willing to stop at nothing to get rich.The film has two huge problems against it. First, Roland Winters is the third and least interesting actor to regularly play Chan (there was a guy who played him in one early film). Second, after dozens of Chan films, the stories are getting a bit old and familiar. Not a bad film....just not up the usual higher standards of the franchise...though it is nice to have #1 AND #2 sons (Keye Luke and Victor Sen Yung) on hand for this one instead of the usual single son assisting their father.

A very late entry in the long-running Charlie Chan series, "The Feathered Serpent" is cheap, dull and instantly forgettable. For some reason, it shows you who the bad guy is somewhere in the middle, thereby removing the element of mystery from a mystery movie! (although they do throw in a - literally - last minute surprise, for those who stick with the movie until the end, who I suspect are always fewer than those who start watching it). Another problem, which I have had with a couple of other Chan films I've watched, is that the supporting characters (outside of Chan's family and Birmingham) are not distinct enough for the viewer to tell them apart; and yet another is that the sound recording quality is poor and sometimes the lines sound garbled. When you can hear them clearly, admittedly there are a couple of great ones, my favorite being "Number One Son very clever now and then. Must be then!" *1/2 out of 4.

This is a somewhat entertaining little venture. Charlie's eldest sons accompany him into the Mexican jungle to try to find an archaeologist who has disappeared while searching for an ancient ruin. As it turns out, there are other guys who would like to accomplish the same thing and they are holding him prisoner. He has knowledge they want. An expedition set up by the guy's sister heads into the jungle. Once again, the old "light- goes-out-and-someone-gets murdered" bit is used. This time an oil lamp gets put out. Anyway, the bad guy are knuckleheads. People's lives are simply a part of the landscape. Killing doesn't seem to bother anyone. Two other things. In this one, Birmingham (Mantan Moreland) is really tiresome. His whole fear thing really gets tiresome. Secondly, has anyone ever wondered why Charlie Chan is wearing a three piece suit and tie in the jungles of Mexico. At one point he mops his brow. My goodness, he should be on the point of passing out. Just a thought.

This Charlie Chan film is unique in that both Victor Sen Yung and Keye Luke appear in it together. During the climax with the bad guys they handle the rough stuff to bring the culprits to justice and Roland Winters is going to need both of them despite them constantly coming to the wrong conclusions. Charlie and the boys and chauffeur Mantan Moreland are on a holiday in Mexico when they hear of the disappearance of an old friend of the Chan family, an archeology professor who has disappeared while looking for Aztec treasure, the equivalent of King Tut's tomb in the western hemisphere. They find a colleague of his friend out on the desert, but no sooner do they rescue him than he's murdered. Another murder follows and the the Chan family leads a search party out on the Mexican desert.This film is more of manhunt than a mystery at least to us because the brains behind all the villainy is revealed just about halfway through the film. Why that was done who knows because it robbed us of any suspense. That's a pity because for Monogram Charlie Chan feature it's not a bad one.