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 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.

Oriental detective Charlie Chan(Roland Winters)with chauffeur Birmingham Brown(Mantan Moreland)and both #1 son Lee(Keye Luke)and #2 son Tommy(Victor Sen Yung)is on vacation headed to Mexico City when a struggling man collapses in their view. The man is Prof. Farnsworth(Leslie Denison), who has been missing since his search for fabled Aztec treasures. Before being stabbed to death he reveals his son is held hostage and his daughter Joan(Beverly Jons)hires Chan to now find him. Since Winters signed on as the revered Chan the franchise has rapidly lost enthusiasm and popularity. You would think that the one positive thing being the first movie with Luke and Yung together would save face; but the predictable script only have the brothers providing some comic relief with Brown. Other players: Robert Livingston, Carol Forman and George J. Lewis.