1936

1h 12m

6.4(28 votes)

Crime

Mystery

Comedy

Thriller

Overview

While visiting the circus with his family, Charlie is recruited by the big top's co-owner to investigate threatening letters that he's received.

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

Cast & Crew

15 members

Acting

Warner Oland

Charlie Chan

Acting

Keye Luke

Lee Chan

Acting

John McGuire

Hal Blake

Acting

Shirley Deane

Louise Norman

Acting

Francis Ford

John Gaines

Acting

J. Carrol Naish

Tom Holt

Acting

Paul Stanton

Joe Kinney

Acting

Boothe Howard

Dan Farrell

No Image

Acting

Drue Leyton

Nellie Farrell

Acting

Wade Boteler

Lt. Macy

Acting

Shia Jung

Su Toy

No Image

Acting

George Brasno

Colonel Tim

No Image

Acting

Olive Brasno

Lady Tiny

No Image

Acting

Maxine Reiner

Marie Norman

No Image

Acting

Franklyn Farnum

Mike - Ticket Taker

Similar Movies

7.2

1976

Murder by Death

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

Movie

4.4

1944

Nabonga

When a treasure hunter seeks a downed airplane in the jungles of Africa, he encounters one of the passenger's young daughter, now fully grown, and with a gorilla protector.

Movie

6.4

1994

Baby's Day Out

Baby Bink couldn't ask for more: he has adoring (if somewhat sickly-sweet) parents, lives in a huge mansion, and he's just about to appear in the social pages of the paper. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is as nice as Baby Bink's parents—especially the three enterprising kidnappers who pretend to be photographers from the newspaper. Successfully kidnapping Baby Bink, they have a harder time keeping hold of the rascal, who not only keeps one step ahead of them, but seems to be more than a little bit smarter than the three bumbling criminals.

Movie

6.1

1977

Animal

Mike (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a stuntman who works with his girlfriend Jane (Raquel Welch). On their wedding day Mike and Jane are forced by producers to do a stunt for a film they are working on. Mike, annoyed doesn't look on the road and crashes the car causing them to end up in a hospital. After they come out Jane doesn't want to talk to Mike so he decides to get her a job in a film in which he is a stunt double for his double who is a star in action pictures but is in fact a wimp.

Movie

2016

Neil Patrick Harris: Circus Awesomeus

Neil Patrick Harris hosts a variety show that features stand-up comedy, magic acts, juggling, sword-swallowers, puppets, ventriloquists and trapeze artists. Taped at Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival in July 2015.

Movie

6.1

1965

Viva Maria!

1907 Central America: Maria II is the daughter of an Irish terrorist. After her father's death, she meets Maria I, a performer, and decides to stay with the circus, and on her debut as a singer, unintentionally invents the striptease and makes the circus famous. Their inadvertent encounter with a socialist revolutionary lands them leading a revolution against the dictator, the capitalists, and the Church.

Movie

7.3

1932

Charlie Chan's Chance

Charlie is the intended murder victim here, and he avoids death only by chance. To find the murderer (since, of course, murder does occur), Charlie must outguess Scotland Yard and New York City police.

Movie

6.6

1955

If the Father and the Son

After Clown Teddy lost his son, he lost his gift for laughter. He opened a joke shop and lives above the shop. His landlady has had a foster son since birth, and Teddy decides to raise the child, who always believed that Teddy was his father. When the mother suddenly appears five years later and wants her son, Teddy decides to run away with the child and goes back onstage with his son. Will the family catch up with them, or will the mother never get her son back?

Movie

8.7

1934

Charlie Chan's Courage

Charlie is hired to deliver a pearl necklace to a millionaire at his ranch. When murder intervenes he disguises himself as a Chinese servant and begins sleuthing.

Movie

6.5

1999

Instinct

In a prison for the criminally insane, deranged anthropologist Ethan Powell is set to be examined by a bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder. Driven by ambition and a hunger for the truth, Caulder will eventually risk everything—even put his very life on the line—in a harrowing attempt to understand the bizarre actions of this madman.

Movie

6.4

2009

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

After a carnival troupe saves his life, a man agrees to help its immortal leader collect five souls and win a bet with the devil.

Movie

5.0

1997

Buddy

An eccentric socialite raises a gorilla as her son.

Movie

5.8

1949

Africa Screams

When bookseller Buzz cons Diana into thinking that his friend Stanley knows all there is to know about Africa, they are abducted and ordered to lead Diana and her henchmen to an African tribe in search of a fortune in jewels.

Movie

6.3

1948

1-2-3 Corona

Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.

Movie

5.2

2014

Circus of the Dead

A sadistic group of clowns kidnap an unsuspecting man and his daughters, forcing him to play a deadly game in order to save his family.

Movie

5.8

1997

Pippi Longstocking

Pippi Longstocking is an extraordinary little girl who lives alone in her house, while her father sails the seven seas. Pippi's irrepressibly fun nature makes her easy to befriend, as neighbors Tommy and Annika find, but can also earn ire, especially from social worker Mrs. Prysselius.

Movie

5.4

2006

Free Jimmy

Four stoners, five vegans, three mobsters, four hunters and a million reasons to free one junkie elephant.

Movie

7.2

1989

Santa Sangre

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless, cult leader mother, and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.

Movie

2006

The Personification of Luther

From award-winning writer/director Shayne Pulley comes a heartbreaking story of one reasonable man with an overwhelming need for the rest of the world to see him as he sees himself.

Movie

7.3

2009

Zombieland

Columbus has made a habit of running from what scares him. Tallahassee doesn't have fears. If he did, he'd kick their ever-living ass. In a world overrun by zombies, these two are perfectly evolved survivors. But now, they're about to stare down the most terrifying prospect of all: each other.

Movie

Recommended Movies

5.9

2012

Breathless

Lorna is a strong-willed Texas woman who’s had enough of her untrustworthy husband Dale’s criminal acts and lack of husbandry. Fed up, she enlists the help of her old friend, Tiny, to help her figure out what to do with Dale after his latest double-cross involving the theft of $100,000 from a bank.

Movie

6.8

2025

Hostile Takeover

Follows Pete, a professional hitman, as he faces a group of assassins after the boss of a crime syndicate suspects disloyalty due to his attendance at Workaholics Anonymous meetings.

Movie

6.1

2007

Cleaner

Single father and former cop Tom Cutler has an unusual occupation: he cleans up death scenes. But when he's called in to sterilize a wealthy suburban residence after a brutal shooting, Cutler is shocked to learn he may have unknowingly erased crucial evidence, entangling himself in a dirty criminal cover-up.

Movie

6.1

2023

God Is a Bullet

Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin.

Movie

7.7

2012

Big Top Scooby-Doo!

When Scooby and the gang hear of a werewolf plaguing a traveling circus, they go undercover as circus performers to get to the bottom.

Movie

6.2

2003

Shade

Tiffany, Charlie and Vernon are con artists looking to up the ante from their typical scams. They figure a good way of doing this is taking down Dean "The Dean" Stevens, a well-known cardsharp, in a rigged game. However, they first need enough money to enter a game with Stevens, so they decide to strike a deal with fellow crook Larry Jennings to scam a local gangster -- which turns out to be a bad idea.

Movie

6.3

2025

Eenie Meanie

A former teenage getaway driver gets dragged back into her unsavory past when a former employer offers her a chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend.

Movie

6.8

2024

LaRoy, Texas

Broke and depressed, Ray is mistaken for a dangerous hitman and given an envelope of cash. Along with his P.I. friend Skip, he must escape the actual hitman to make it out of LaRoy alive.

Movie

6.1

1989

The Dream Team

Four mental patients on a field trip in New York City must save their caring chaperone, who ends up being taken to a hospital in a coma after accidentally witnessing a murder, before the killers can find him and finish the job.

Movie

5.9

2001

One Night at McCool's

On an ordinary night, in an ordinary part of town, a beautiful young woman walks into a bar. Her name is Jewel, and before long she is chatting to bartender Randy. The pair leave together, but he ends up getting into a tussle with her criminal boyfriend, who she then shoots dead, later persuading Randy to take the rap for her. But this isn't the end of it, as both Randy's cousin Carl and the detective assigned to the murder case also fall for Jewel's charms and find themselves caught up in the ensuing events. It seems that any man who meets Jewel falls instantly in love with her, and she's going to use this fully to her own advantage, leaving a trail of havoc in her wake. It also seems that she is going to get away with it - that is, until Randy decides to hire a hitman...

Movie

6.6

2025

Trap House

An undercover DEA agent and his partner embark on a game of cat and mouse with an audacious, and surprising group of thieves – their own rebellious teenagers, who have begun robbing from a dangerous cartel, using their parents' tactics and top-secret intel to do it.

Movie

6.1

2025

All the Devils Are Here

After a heist, four criminals lay low in a remote safehouse, waiting for orders. As paranoia builds, one thing becomes clear — the real threat may not be outside, but among them.

Movie

5.9

2021

The Virtuoso

Danger, deception and murder descend upon a sleepy town when a professional assassin accepts a new assignment from his enigmatic boss.

Movie

7.4

2025

Thieves Highway

After discovering a plot to haul stolen cattle in the middle of nowhere, a desperate and isolated lawman becomes the only thing standing between a group of dangerous rustlers and a clear run to the border.

Movie

5.9

2017

S.W.A.T.: Under Siege

When a D.E.A. and S.W.A.T. cartel takedown ends in a shootout, S.W.A.T. Agent Travis Hall seizes a mysterious prisoner taking him into custody. Before long, the S.W.A.T. compound is under siege by wave-after-wave of assault teams attempting to recover the prisoner known as “The Scorpion” for the tattoo blazed across his back. When Travis discovers that his prisoner is a Secret Ops double agent planted within the cartel, it’s up to him and his expert S.W.A.T. team to keep “The Scorpion” and his billion dollar secrets safe.

Movie

6.4

2018

The Commuter

A businessman, on his daily commute home, gets unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only his life but the lives of those around him.

Movie

6.3

2018

Accident Man

Mike Fallon, the Accident Man, is a stone cold killer. When a loved one is murdered by his own crew, Fallon is forced to avenge the one person who actually meant something to him.

Movie

6.7

1991

Shadows and Fog

With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.

Movie

6.3

2009

The International

An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.

Movie

5.9

2024

Absolution

An aging ex-boxer gangster working as muscle for a Boston crime boss receives an upsetting diagnosis. Despite a faltering memory, he attempts to rectify the sins of his past and reconnect with his estranged children. He is determined to leave a positive legacy for his grandson, but the criminal underworld isn’t done with him and won’t loosen their grip willingly.

Movie