ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

MartinHafer In the 1960s and 70s, actor Khigh Dhiegh repeatedly guest starred as the evil Red Chinese agent, Wo Fat. Here, Dhiegh stars in a film about ancient China. While he was quite good and looked right to be playing a Chinese detective, Dhiegh is actually NOT Asian at all!! As for the rest of the cast, they are a variety of Asian-Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Korean heritage.The fact that there was ever a made for TV movie based on the world's first detective story is unusual because so often films are based on western stories....and this one is from 7th century China. It's the story of a Chinese judge who must unravel a murder and find a missing woman...and as the story progresses, bodies keep piling up! The story is interesting and enjoyable...especially the ending that involves a bear! This is an enjoyable film and the only real deficit is that it's a bit talky and occasionally slow. Still, worth seeing and available on YouTube.

runar-4 Not only have I read all 16 of van Gulik's Judge Dee books, but also his translation of "Dee Goong An", which was the Chinese literary source for the Judge, and also a number of van Gulik's other works and source materials (including a very tedious novel in a contemporary setting). Khigh Dhiegh made an acceptable Judge, but I felt that Mako as Tao Gan was a bad piece of casting - he played the character as too fawning and not quite clever enough. Motai (Mo Mo-te in the book) was a bit overplayed. Probably the best bit of casting was Keye Luke as the arrogant Sun Ming.On the other hand, it was refreshing to see and not a complete disappointment. I have a fairly decent tape I made from a rebroadcast of the movie in the mid-'80s with fairly good picture and sound quality.The A&E Nero Wolfe series set a gold standard for faithfulness to sources that the '70s just weren't up to. I can only hope that someone will turn up to be for Robert H. van Gulik what Timothy Hutton was to Rex Stout.

James Knoppow Another person here said that, having read all of the Dee mysteries, he thought this was a bad adaptation.I very strongly disagree. I have also read them all, and love them all. The film is different because it is a film. But the warmth, the humor, and the clever detecting is the same. I give the books a 10 and I give this film a 10.This film bears the same resemblance to it's originating books as the Charley Chan film series did to Earl Derr Biggers novels. It's nearly if not actually impossible to get everything into a movie that is in a novel, and when it's a series of novels and short stories, as here, one gets a collective sense of the central characters that no single film can possibly produce. It is true that Judge Dee written doesn't match Judge Dee filmed entirely, but then, neither did Charley Chan. The only thing I ask of a film is that it be well done, and either or both informative or entertaining.I think this film more than satisfies on all counts.

pro_crustes All the signs were there that this would have been a series, and I am sure I would have watched and enjoyed it, just as I watched and enjoyed the "Ellery Queen" series of about the same vintage, and the later (and better) "Nero Wolfe" on A&E. This one shares their format of an interesting setting used to lay out the facts of a classical-style mystery story, and you get the chance to solve it yourself. But, for some sad reason, even though mysteries are an enduringly popular genre in print, this type of TV just never quite catches on.The decision to set the story in old China was clever, but maybe the audience in 1974 expected a kung fu movie (which, much as I like that genre too, I was glad to see they had the courage to almost completely set aside in favor of another type of story). No idea where you might get to see this one today, but if it shows up on late-night TV, set your VCR.