Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981)

Lee Chan, Jr. (Richard Hatch) was an aspiring detective and a well-established klutz.  His ability to suffer cringe-inducing slapstick silliness knew no bounds.  Worse, he was engaged to marry Cordelia (Michelle Pfeiffer), who proved to be his equal in uncoordinated pratfalls.  Lee worships his grandfather, the great detective Charlie Chan (Peter Ustinov).  As a series of bizarre murders have plagued San Francisco, the police chief (Brian Keith) has summoned Charlie Chan to consult on the case.  The chief is an ill-tempered hypochondriac who spends most of his time yelling.  Lee's grandmother, Mrs. Lupowitz (Lee Grant), is desperate to spend time with her grandson and convince him that detective work is not for him.  Often, she fondles and caresses her husband's urn, explaining how she needs him.  His murder by the Dragon Queen (Angie Dickinson) was detailed in a black and white flashback.  Yes, Charlie Chan solved the case.

The mystery is hardly a mystery and the comedy is atrocious.  Charlie Chan spends most of his time making fortune cookie observations and marveling at the incompetence of his grandson.  When the climax arrives to reveal the killer, Charlie exposes most of the characters for this or that, all of which is meaningless.  Great, the chauffeur is an African prince.  So what?  This character is not really confined to a wheelchair.  Impressive deduction, but meaningless.  The big twist - such as it is - was revealed earlier to a casual viewer.

Despite an excellent cast, this movie is barely watchable.  Skip!

The Black Hole (1979)

The USS Palomino is returning from a long exploratory mission when they pass near a black hole.  To their surprise, the long lost USS Cygnus is located nearby.  Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux) is particularly interested since her father served on the ship when it went missing.  They fly in to take a closer look, fighting the increasing gravity of The Black Hole all the way, but suddenly enter a zero gravity field around the Cygnus.  There appear to be no signs of life.  No sooner have they made a pass of the ship than the gravity takes hold again.  The Palomino suffers damage fighting back to the null gravity field of the Cygnus and must make repairs before they can continue.  They land on the Cygnus, which suddenly shows signs of life.

Boarding the ship, they are disarmed by unseen forces and then 'led' by opening doors to the ship's bridge. There they meet Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and his robot enforcer, Maximilian. Reinhardt spins a tale about a damage ship unable to return. The crew left - never making it back - while he stayed to repair the Cygnus and continue his research. In the intervening years, he has constructed faceless androids to crew the ship. Captain Holland (Robert Forester), Reporter Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine), and Vincent the Robot (Roddy McDowell) all encounter things on the Cygnus that contradict Reinhardt's telling.

There are some oddball facets to the movie.  Vincent has a fully developed personality and is entirely unlike a robot.  He provides snarky banter and certainly doesn't follow Asimov's laws of robotics.  Bob (Slim Pickens) even has a western twang.  Meanwhile, all other robots are mute, including Maximilian.  Oddly, Maximilian seems able to speak with Reinhardt.  Perhaps they shared ESP, like Kate did with Vincent.  It was strange that she could only use her ESP with the robot and not her fellow humans.  Does Vincent have a special ESP circuit installed? 

There are a lot of crazy problems with the movie. The Cygnus has been here for 20 years and, on the very day it plans to fly through the black hole, it is smashed to bits by a meteor storm. What, they didn't see them coming? They were glowing red! Why did Reinhardt turn against the crew of the Palomino? If he had just let them go, all would have worked out fine, except for that meteor storm he didn't see coming. After seeing what happened to the fully-crewed Palomino last time it was beyond the null gravity field of the Cygnus, what made Harry Booth think he could pilot it solo? The ending is truly bizarre, with Reinhardt melding with Maximilian and ending on a fiery landscape, presumably hell. Hardly a sci-fi ending. Meanwhile, the survivors of the Palomino find themselves traveling through the black hole, flung to some distant and unexplored region. Happy ending? Hardly! That scout ship isn't going to support them for long and the odds of finding a habitable planet are extremely slim.

When I originally saw this - as a 12 year-old - I thought it was mostly cool.  I loved Vincent and Bob most of all and made them out of Legos.  Today, it's a movie that had potential but was poorly executed.  The effort at some 2001: A Space Odyssey ending was misguided.  Vincent and Bob are now my two least favorite characters.