When Professor Arnold discovers the tomb of an Ancient high priest, which probably leads to the treasures of the goddess Sekhmet, he mysteriously disappears. His brother, his daughter and his son have been waiting for news from him for weeks when Charlie Chan arrives with the news that some of the items from the tomb, which were all to be delivered to the French Archaeological Society, have been found in various private collections in Europe; and this, combined with the professor's sudden disappearance, of course leads him to the conclusion that someone from the expedition team wants to make a fortune out of the finds - and much more of the hidden treasures of Sekhmet...A VERY suspenseful, exotic adventure of our Chinese detective, highly dramatic at times, but also with some comical elements, and a very beautiful love story. Warner Oland is once more at his best, just like all the rest of the cast, most of whom regrettably are more or less forgotten today - except for the girl who played the mysterious young Egyptian servant: Rita Cansino - better known as Rita Hayworth...So there are MANY reasons for watching this classic mystery, which is not just another 'whodunit' set in some faraway country, but MUCH more - here, Ancient history meets with modern greed and ruthlessness; and the 'antidote' to it in the shape of a very clever, philosophical and humane Chinaman...

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.

This was one of the best of the early Warner Oland Chan films for me, though I'm partial to it because I love old horror movies and "Charlie Chan in Egypt" felt very much like an old mummy picture. In this one, the great detective travels to the historical pyramids to unravel the mystery behind a missing archaeologist and the treasure he unearthed from an ancient mummy's tomb. Very atmospheric and dark, with many strange events on display to perk up the interest.It must be mentioned that the black "comical" actor Stepin Fetchit appears in this film, and back in the day he used to make a career of undermining black people. It's easy to see why some African American viewers might find his character offensive here. Even if you feel that there's a tendency for some modern-day viewers to over-react to political incorrectness in some films of those old days, it's hard not to take notice here and wince. Stepin plays a muttering servant called "Snowshoes" whose speech is difficult to understand and who is portrayed as utterly lazy, fearful and ignorant. His boss - who's the young hero of the film and whose side we're supposed to be on - constantly berates him and scolds him ("do as you're told!") and physically shoves him around.

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.