Charlie Chan
WARNER OLAND
Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936) 9/10
Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) 8/10
Charlie Chan's Secret (1936) 7.5/10
Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) 7/10
Charlie Chan in London (1934) 6.5/10
The Black Camel (1931) 6/10
Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) 6/10
Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936) 6/10
Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937) 6/10
Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937) 3/10
LOST FILMS (speculative scores based on available materials)
Charlie Chan's Chance (1932) 6.5/10
Charlie Chan's Courage (1934) 6.5/10
Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) 5.5/10
Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933) 5/10
SIDNEY TOLER AT FOX
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) 9.5/10
Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940) 9/10
Dead Men Tell (1941) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) 8/10
Castle in the Desert (1942) 8/10
Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940) 7/10
Charlie Chan in Rio (1941) 6/10
Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) 5/10
Murder Over New York (1940) 4.5/10
City in Darkness (1939) 3.5/10
SIDNEY TOLER AT MONOGRAM
The Shanghai Cobra (1945) 6.5/10
The Scarlet Clue (1945) 6.5/10
Dark Alibi (1946) 6/10
The Chinese Cat (1944) 5.5/10
The Trap (1946) 5.5/10
Dangerous Money (1946) 5.5/10
The Jade Mask (1945) 5.5/10
Black Magic (1944) 5/10
Shadows Over Chinatown (1946) 5/10
Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) 4/10
The Red Dragon (1945) 3/10
ROLAND WINTERS
The Shanghai Chest (1948) 6/10
The Chinese Ring (1947) 6/10
The Sky Dragon (1949) 5.5/10
The Golden Eye (1948) 5/10
Docks of New Orleans (1948) 4/10
The Feathered Serpent (1948) 3.5/10
OTHER FILMS
The Return of Charlie Chan (1972) 5.5/10
They Were Thirteen (1931) 5/10
Behind That Curtain (1929) 1.5/10
Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) 1/10
TV SHOWS
The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957-58) 5.5/10
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (1972) 4/10
ALL EXTANT FILMS RANKED
01 - Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) 9.5/10
02 - Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936) 9/10
03 - Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940) 9/10
04 - Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) 8.5/10
05 - Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936) 8.5/10
06 - Dead Men Tell (1941) 8.5/10
07 - Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) 8.5/10
08 - Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) 8/10
09 - Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) 8/10
10 - Castle in the Desert (1942) 8/10
11 - Charlie Chan's Secret (1936) 7.5/10
12 - Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) 7/10
13 - Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940) 7/10
14 - Charlie Chan in London (1934) 6.5/10
15 - The Shanghai Cobra (1945) 6.5/10
16 - The Scarlet Clue (1945) 6.5/10
17 - The Black Camel (1931) 6/10
18 - Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) 6/10
19 - Dark Alibi (1946) 6/10
20 - Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936) 6/10
21 - Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937) 6/10
22 - Charlie Chan in Rio (1941) 6/10
23 - The Shanghai Chest (1948) 6/10
24 - The Chinese Ring (1947) 6/10
25 - The Return of Charlie Chan (1972) 5.5
26 - The Chinese Cat (1944) 5.5/10
27 - The Trap (1946) 5.5/10
28 - The Sky Dragon (1949) 5.5/10
29 - Dangerous Money (1946) 5.5/10
30 - The Jade Mask (1945) 5.5/10
31 - They Were Thirteen (1931) 5/10
32 - Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) 5/10
33 - Black Magic (1944) 5/10
34 - The Golden Eye (1948) 5/10
35 - Shadows Over Chinatown (1946) 5/10
36 - Murder Over New York (1940) 4.5/10
37 - Docks of New Orleans (1948) 4/10
38 - Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) 4/10
39 - The Feathered Serpent (1948) 3.5/10
40 - City in Darkness (1939) 3.5/10
41 - The Red Dragon (1945) 3/10
42 - Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937) 3/10
43 - Behind That Curtain (1929) 1.5/10
44 - Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) 1/10
Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936) 9/10
Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) 8/10
Charlie Chan's Secret (1936) 7.5/10
Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) 7/10
Charlie Chan in London (1934) 6.5/10
The Black Camel (1931) 6/10
Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) 6/10
Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936) 6/10
Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937) 6/10
Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937) 3/10
LOST FILMS (speculative scores based on available materials)
Charlie Chan's Chance (1932) 6.5/10
Charlie Chan's Courage (1934) 6.5/10
Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) 5.5/10
Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933) 5/10
SIDNEY TOLER AT FOX
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) 9.5/10
Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940) 9/10
Dead Men Tell (1941) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) 8.5/10
Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) 8/10
Castle in the Desert (1942) 8/10
Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940) 7/10
Charlie Chan in Rio (1941) 6/10
Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) 5/10
Murder Over New York (1940) 4.5/10
City in Darkness (1939) 3.5/10
SIDNEY TOLER AT MONOGRAM
The Shanghai Cobra (1945) 6.5/10
The Scarlet Clue (1945) 6.5/10
Dark Alibi (1946) 6/10
The Chinese Cat (1944) 5.5/10
The Trap (1946) 5.5/10
Dangerous Money (1946) 5.5/10
The Jade Mask (1945) 5.5/10
Black Magic (1944) 5/10
Shadows Over Chinatown (1946) 5/10
Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) 4/10
The Red Dragon (1945) 3/10
ROLAND WINTERS
The Shanghai Chest (1948) 6/10
The Chinese Ring (1947) 6/10
The Sky Dragon (1949) 5.5/10
The Golden Eye (1948) 5/10
Docks of New Orleans (1948) 4/10
The Feathered Serpent (1948) 3.5/10
OTHER FILMS
The Return of Charlie Chan (1972) 5.5/10
They Were Thirteen (1931) 5/10
Behind That Curtain (1929) 1.5/10
Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) 1/10
TV SHOWS
The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957-58) 5.5/10
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (1972) 4/10
ALL EXTANT FILMS RANKED
01 - Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) 9.5/10
02 - Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936) 9/10
03 - Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940) 9/10
04 - Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) 8.5/10
05 - Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936) 8.5/10
06 - Dead Men Tell (1941) 8.5/10
07 - Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) 8.5/10
08 - Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) 8/10
09 - Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) 8/10
10 - Castle in the Desert (1942) 8/10
11 - Charlie Chan's Secret (1936) 7.5/10
12 - Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) 7/10
13 - Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940) 7/10
14 - Charlie Chan in London (1934) 6.5/10
15 - The Shanghai Cobra (1945) 6.5/10
16 - The Scarlet Clue (1945) 6.5/10
17 - The Black Camel (1931) 6/10
18 - Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) 6/10
19 - Dark Alibi (1946) 6/10
20 - Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936) 6/10
21 - Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937) 6/10
22 - Charlie Chan in Rio (1941) 6/10
23 - The Shanghai Chest (1948) 6/10
24 - The Chinese Ring (1947) 6/10
25 - The Return of Charlie Chan (1972) 5.5
26 - The Chinese Cat (1944) 5.5/10
27 - The Trap (1946) 5.5/10
28 - The Sky Dragon (1949) 5.5/10
29 - Dangerous Money (1946) 5.5/10
30 - The Jade Mask (1945) 5.5/10
31 - They Were Thirteen (1931) 5/10
32 - Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) 5/10
33 - Black Magic (1944) 5/10
34 - The Golden Eye (1948) 5/10
35 - Shadows Over Chinatown (1946) 5/10
36 - Murder Over New York (1940) 4.5/10
37 - Docks of New Orleans (1948) 4/10
38 - Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) 4/10
39 - The Feathered Serpent (1948) 3.5/10
40 - City in Darkness (1939) 3.5/10
41 - The Red Dragon (1945) 3/10
42 - Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937) 3/10
43 - Behind That Curtain (1929) 1.5/10
44 - Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) 1/10
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- DirectorIrving CummingsStarsWarner BaxterLois MoranGilbert EmeryEve Mannering realizes too late that her abusive husband is a philanderer and murderer and seeks protection with her true love, explorer John Beetham."Behind That Curtain" confidently strides into every early talkie pitfall there is. For one, the acting is stagey to almost parodic levels. Everyone talks... very... very... slowly... indeed, enunciating every syllable separately, leaving long, whopping pauses between each sentence careful not to speak over his fellow actor's line. I am convinced that if everyone spoke normally the film would be over in half the time. The blocking is stilted even for 1920s standards. There are no camera movements and all the actors are positioned in flat, unimaginative tableaux, delivering their lines towards the camera without moving. They don't stand as much as pose. They don't walk as much as strut. The pace, consequently, is languid and each scene seems to run on for far longer than it should.
The acting is of variable quality. Warner Baxter and Lois Moran are fine if not particularly memorable romantic leads and Gilbert Emery makes for a convincing authority figure. On the other end of the spectrum is Philip Strange whose portrayal of the snide villain is anything but subtle and whose delivery is an insult to wood. Boris Karloff makes his talkie-debut here in an inconsequential part that could easily go unnoticed. With the sinister looks he keeps giving the camera you'd think he was playing the villain instead of a lowly Arabic servant. The problem, however, is that everyone seems ill at ease on screen. Forced to act at such a languid pace and making an uncomfortable transition from silent movies, everyone seems self-conscious and discombobulated. In several long shots, the actors even seem to forget how to walk and seem to stagger in and out of rooms like toddlers.
But no one will be watching "Behind That Curtain" for its cinematic qualities. The film is best known as the oldest surviving cinematic outing of Charlie Chan, the brilliant Chinese detective who would go on to appear in further 4? films for Fox. While the film is based on Earl Derr Biggers' novel it is no mystery. Instead, it is a distinctly torrid melodrama, one to rival even the most over-the-top Indian soap operas. The story revolves around a love triangle between Eve (Lois Moran), her husband Eric (Philip Strange), and her childhood friend, the explorer Colonel Beetham (Warner Baxter). After Eve learns that Eric is a cheater and a murderer she escapes into the Arabic desert with Beetham pursued by a dogged Scotland Yard inspector Sir Frederick (Gilbert Emery). Chan is relegated to a tiny part as Sir Frederick's honourable colleague. He appears in only a single, unimportant scene and is amateurishly played by E.L. Park.
"Behind That Curtain" offers some interest but not due to its objective qualities. It is a lot of fun to watch as a kind of trashy 1920s soap opera with all the trappings of the genre. The over-the-top performances, overcooked emotions, explosive bust-ups and hilariously portentous dialogue delivered in voices shivering with emotion.
But if we look at it as a serious movie, "Behind That Curtain" is a bust. Besides some eye-catching desert photography and nice musical passages, the film is entirely without merit. With its stilted performances, stagy direction and languid pace, it is frequently a chore to get through its needlessly elongated 90-minute runtime.
1.5/10 - DirectorHamilton MacFaddenStarsWarner OlandJohn GarrickMarguerite ChurchillCharlie steps in to solve the murder of a wealthy American found dead in a London hotel. Settings include London, Nice, San Remo, Honolulu, and Hong Kong. Fast-paced with lots of wisecracking.Of all the lost Charlie Chan films, "Charlie Chan Carries On" is the one that's easiest to get a good idea of. For one, its theatrical trailer still survives with a decent if brief glimpse at a few scenes from the film. Furthermore, a full shooting script is available for reading on the excellent Charlie Chan Family Home website. Last but not least, the Spanish-language remake, "They Were Thirteen", made on the same sets and with the same script, still exists and is available on home video.
That makes the task of mentally reconstructing "Charlie Chan Carries On" far easier than getting even a passing glimpse at what, say, "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" would have been like.
So, what does this mental reconstruction amount to? Well, I would say that "Charlie Chan Carries On" would not have been a million miles away from "The Black Camel", Charlie Chan's second cinematic outing which was also directed by Hamilton MacFadden, made in 1931, and which still survives. It is a stagy, dated effort, clearly displaying the awkwardness of the early talkie era. But it is also an undeniably enjoyable and atmospheric picture.
The story of "Charlie Chan Carries On", based on the same-named novel by Earl Derr Biggers, is a lot more engaging and original than the one featured in "The Black Camel". It revolves around a group of American tourists on a trip around the world which takes them from New York to France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, Singapore, and finally Honolulu. But what the travellers don't know is that among them is a dangerous killer, a ruthless diamond smuggler named Jim Everhard (an apt surname by all accounts).
While in London, Everhard murders one of the tourists, a kindly old man which sets the determined Inspector Duff (Peter Gawthorne) on his case. When a bullet puts Duff out of commission, his old friend, the brilliant Chinese detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) carries on the investigation. He boards the ship taking the tourists from Honolulu to New York and endeavours to find out which of the tourists is Jim Everhard before they reach their final destination.
The set-up is absolutely terrific but its execution in the screenplay by Barry Conners and Philip Klein is not as dynamic as the plot summary might suggest. Instead of beginning with Charlie Chan boarding the ship, it has a leaden 40-minute prologue in which we follow Inspector Duff's investigation and a bevvy of humorous but ultimately meaningless subplots about the tourists' personal lives.
I have no way of knowing how this prologue would have ultimately played on screen but I can say that I found it a rather dull affair in "They Were Thirteen" and that the script does not read any better. When the novel was adapted again in 1940 under the title "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise", the writers smartly introduced Charlie Chan right at the beginning. Leaving him out of the story for so long is, in my opinion, a major misstep.
Looking at the cast list of "Charlie Chan Carries On", I see some familiar and likeable names. I would have particularly loved to have seen Marjorie White, a terrific comedic actress, in the film. She has some of the script's best lines and her Spanish counterpart Blanca de Castejon absolutely stole every scene she was in. The brief glimpses in the trailer, however, are less kind towards Warren Hymer and John T. Murray whose performances come across as overly broad and stiff. Maybe they would have played better when viewed in the context of the whole picture but I have my doubts.
Even with all its flaws, I do think the script for "Charlie Chan Carries On" could have worked relatively well had it been played with the kind of paciness and dynamicity that later Chan films had. However, this was a 1931 film and if "The Black Camel" is anything to go by, I think that such attributes are wishful thinking. Even with Hamilton MacFadden's inventive, atmospheric direction, I fear that "Charlie Chan Carries On" was a stagy, stiff affair.
There is no doubt it is a massive shame that the first Warner Oland Charlie Chan film is missing but I am not going to claim we're short of a masterpiece. Having now read the script and seen both the trailer and the Spanish-language remake, I think that "Charlie Chan Carries On" would not have scored higher than a 6 in a best-case scenario.
I like the premise and the cast and a lot of the comedic dialogue is snappy and clever but it is hard to get around the fact that the story dilly-dallies for 40 minutes before Charlie Chan is finally introduced. We also should not ignore the technical limitations and awkwardness of early talkies which would have certainly marred this particular production. The realist in me will give "Charlie Chan Carries On" a speculative score of 5.5. - DirectorDavid HowardStarsJuan TorenaAna María CustodioRafael CalvoThis is the Spanish-language version, with a different cast and crew, of the Charlie Chan film Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), in which Charlie sets out to discover the killer of an American found dead in a London hotel room.First a little history lesson! In the early 1930s, the days of the awkward transition between silent films and talkies, major Hollywood studios started making the same film twice. This is not a smart-aleck way of criticising Hollywood's lack of imagination, I mean that literally. In order to sell their talkies worldwide, they'd make the English-language version of the film first and then shoot an alternative Spanish-language version on the same sets afterwards.
This bizarre and costly practice didn't have a terribly long life. It ended pretty much as soon as it began, once the studios discovered the magic of dubbing but it produced at least two significant alternatives. One is George Melford's "Dracula", a surprisingly improved alternative to the Tod Browning classic. The other is "They Were Thirteen", the Spanish-language remake of "Charlie Chan Carries On", the first of sixteen Charlie Chan films to star Warner Oland and the first of forty-two films that form the long-running series of movies about the eponymous Chinese detective.
The reason "They Were Thirteen" is significant is because, sadly, "Charlie Chan Carries On" is a lost movie. Thankfully, this Spanish-language version survives and offers an intriguing glimpse into what the progenitor of the Charlie Chan film series might have looked like.
"They Were Thirteen" falls for a lot of early talkie trappings. Its direction is stagy and stilted, the performances broad and declarative, and the pacing is occasionally quite leaden. Still, I must admit I enjoyed this movie mostly for its engrossing mystery.
Based on an Earl Derr Biggers novel, the film begins with the murder of an old man in a London hotel. It transpires that he was part of a thirteen-person tourist group on a trip which will take them from America to France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, Singapore, and finally Honolulu.
The indefatigable Scotland Yard Inspector Duff (Rafael Calvo) does not manage to solve the case before the group's departure from London but he does get in touch with his old friend Charlie Chan (Manuel Arbo), the marvel of the Honolulu police force, who joins the tourists in Honolulu. Will he manage to identify the killer among the remaining twelve before the ship reaches New York? You can bet your honourable behind that he will.
The film is a globe-trotting mystery and yet it never manages to shake off that claustrophobic stagy atmosphere that a lot of these early talkies have. I blame that failure on director David Howard whose work is competent but distinctly flat. If his work on the subsequent Charlie Chan mysteries is anything to go on, I'm certain that the English-language director Hamilton MacFadden found some interesting ways to make the film more visually dynamic. Howard, sadly, lacks MacFadden's imaginative touch. His camerawork is stiff and plain and is not at all helped by Sidney Wagner's flat and unatmospheric cinematography.
"They Were Thirteen" has one other significant issue and that is pacing. Despite a solid, intriguing opening, the film seems to spin its wheels for the first half of its runtime. It takes 41 minutes for Charlie Chan to first appear and he doesn't board the ship until 50 minutes of this 80-minute movie have passed. Once the investigation gets going, however, there is far too little time to develop the story, so the final third feels horridly rushed and fairly muddled. I'm still not sure who some of the suspects are! This problem was fixed when the novel was adapted again in 1940 with Sidney Toler in the lead role under the title of "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise".
Speaking of Charlie Chan, he's played here by Manuel Arbo who does an acceptable if unremarkable job imitating Warner Oland's interpretation of the character. He overdoes the whole "humble detective" act, for my liking, and lacks Oland's charisma and commanding presence. In the end, he comes across more like the film's comic relief than a serious detective protagonist.
The rest of the cast is uneven but mostly likeable with especially good performances coming from Rafael Calvo, Raul Roulien, and Blanca de Castejon. I enjoyed the little subplots going on in the background such as a rivalry between two young people which turns into a love affair. I especially enjoyed the brief but very entertaining scenes between Max Minchin (Raul Roulien), a tough-guy Chicago gangster and his moll Peggy (Blanca de Castejon) who nags him relentlessly and buys every souvenir in sight much to her husband's dismay. In a particularly funny scene, she ends up buying a massive reading lamp from a street vendor. "Maybe now that she has a lamp, she'll buy a book," quips Max.
"They Were Thirteen" is a stiff movie which definitely bears the marks of its age but it is bolstered by an interesting mystery (with, what must be said, a rather unsatisfying conclusion) and a consistently entertaining cast. I enjoyed it despite its leaden pace and unremarkable direction both as a diverting entry into the Charlie Chan film series and as a fascinating peek into what the lost "Charlie Chan Carries On" might have looked like.
5/10 - DirectorHamilton MacFaddenStarsWarner OlandSally EilersBela LugosiThe unsolved murder of a Hollywood actor several years earlier and an enigmatic psychic are the keys to help Charlie solve the Honolulu stabbing death of a beautiful actress.Since "Charlie Chan Carries On" is a lost film, "The Black Camel" remains the earliest surviving film starring Warner Oland as the great Chinese detective Charlie Chan, the marvel of the Hawaiian police force who hides his sparkling intelligence behind the mask of geniality.
Oland would go on to memorably essay the part in sixteen entertaining and atmospheric films. There is something of the Columbo method of detecting to his Chan here. He has the tendency to appear in the unlikeliest of places at the most inopportune of moments. He deliberately makes himself appear bumbling and harmless in order to weasel his way into a suspect's confidence. Oland is just wonderful here, mixing humour and a commanding, scene-stealing presence with the precision of a seasoned performer.
Also wonderful is the film's big guest star - Bela Lugosi who had already solidified his name in film history with "Dracula" earlier the same year. Here he plays Tarneverro, a manipulative and slyly charming mentalist who holds a Hollywood actress by the name of Shelah Fane (Dorothy Revler) in the palm of his hand.
Lugosi is superb at seeming both sinister and amicable at the same time. That is the quality that made him a defining Count Dracula and that very same quality makes him irresistible in "The Black Camel". There is a genuine allure of mystery around Lugosi whose scenes with Oland are absolutely electric. The verbal sparring and bizarre camaraderie that develops between these two polar opposite men is the most entertaining and interesting aspect of the movie.
The plot begins, of course, once Shelah Fane is found dead in the bedroom of her Honolulu house. She came to the island to make a movie and returned home in a coffin. As Charlie Chan memorably puts it, death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate.
Chan's implacable boss (Robert Homans) is convinced that Tarnaverro is the killer but Chan is not so sure. He suspects that the motive for the murder of Shelah Fane is connected to a similar killing that took place three years before.
"The Black Camel" was made in 1931, smack in the middle of the awkward transition phase between silent movies and talkies. The earliest sound films suffered greatly from this rushed and stumbling transition, and "The Black Camel" bears many of the symptoms such as stagy mise-en-scene, stilted camera work, and stiff performances.
Surprisingly, however, "The Black Camel" is one of the more watchable early talkies, in my opinion. Director Hamilton MacFadden makes very good use of some terrific location work in beautiful Hawaii and his cinematographers Joseph August and Daniel Clark give us some truly atmospheric and downright creepy imagery. Look, for instance, at the wonderful seance scene in which Tarneverro and Shelah Fane are lit only by the eery light of the medium's crystal ball. Notice, as well, some really first-rate close-ups such as the one in which Charlie Chan, bathed in shadows and lit from beneath, delivers the memorable quote which gave the film its title.
McFadden's camerawork is also worth commending since he employs a lot more movement and innovation than is usual for early talkies. I wouldn't say that "The Black Camel" is quite as dynamic as the silent films that preceded it or for that matter the later talkies that followed but it is a lot less stagey than you might expect.
Also very good is the dialogue credited to Barry Conners and Philip Klein which is full of witticisms and barbs. A starlet offended by Chan's insistent questioning informs him that if she were a dose of poison, she'd give herself to him. Chan, later on, observes that whenever conscience tries to speak, the telephone goes out of order. Earlier on in the film, he tells Tarnaverro that like a shadow, his fame has followed him from Hollywood. When the elusive medium refuses to tell Chan whom he suspects of the murder Chan complains that he is trying to quench the fire of his curiosity with a handful of straw.
Sadly, the story, based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers, is far less memorable than the dialogue. Once the novelty of a murder on a film set wears off, there's really little left to hold our attention. Chan's investigation is fairly straightforward, the murder itself is rather mundane and lacks any particular innovation, and the murderer, once revealed, could well have been anyone in the cast. Their identity feels more like it was plucked out of a hat than like it's been truly well thought out.
Also, I must note that as wonderful as Oland and Lugosi are, the rest of the cast fare a lot less well. Especially bad is the performance given by Dorothy Revier whose acting is very physically demonstrative and feels like it very much belongs in the silent era. Her line readings are notably over-rehearsed and sound false. Similarly over-the-top are the performances of William Post Jr. as Shelah Fane's unlucky fiancee and Dwight Fry who plays Ms Fane's butler with the same kind of overstated lunacy he had when he played Renfield in "Dracula".
The most out-of-place turn, however, comes from Otto Yamaoka as Chan's bumbling sidekick Kashimo. Charlie Chan is almost always paired with a comic relief sidekick, but unlike some of the best ones like Keye Luke, Yamaoka's performance very much feels like it belongs in a very broad slapstick comedy. He also lacks any kind of chemistry with Oland who mostly seems to be bemused by his co-star's antics and rather reluctant to participate.
On the other hand, I quite enjoyed Murray Kinnell as a beach bum who also happens to be a painter, C. Henry Gordon as one of Shelah Fane's Hollywood cronies, and Marjorie White who absolutely steals the show with her brief but very entertaining turn as a witty starlet.
"The Black Camel" does bear the mark of its age. It's occasionally stagy and stilted, full of over-the-top performances and dodgy line readings, but the scenes between Oland and Lugosi alone are worth the price of admission (or rather the price of the DVD). Furthermore, I found the film an atmospheric and entertaining thriller whose only major failing is a less-than-engaging mystery. It's not top-tier Charlie Chan but it delivers the goods.
6/10 - DirectorJohn G. BlystoneStarsWarner OlandAlexander KirklandH.B. WarnerCharlie 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.In 2006, when the Charlie Chan films were released on DVD in five beautiful, extras-laden box sets, Fox saw fit to produce two reconstructions of the early lost Chan films "Charlie Chan's Chance" and "Charlie Chan's Courage". These reconstructions were audio plays based on the surviving scripts illustrated by production stills and photoshopped collages. The acting in them is pretty ropey (especially, unfortunately, from the man playing Charlie Chan) but they are currently the best way to get an idea of what these lost films might have been like. Another terrific resource is The Charlie Chan Family Home website where you can read the surviving screenplays for these two films as well as the two that sadly weren't reconstructed for the DVDs.
Having both seen the reconstruction and read the script I can safely claim that the loss of "Charlie Chan's Chance" is an unfortunate one. The engaging and clever story based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers has Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) investigating the murder of a policeman who had been investigating a cold case. He was, in fact, on the tail of Alan Raleigh, a dangerous English murderer who had escaped capture several years ago and is now hiding in New York.
The dynamic script takes Charlie all across town in pursuit of this dangerous man. The film begins with the discovery of the policeman's body in a Wall Street penthouse and continues with pacy, atmospheric scenes in nightclubs, New York's poor neighbourhoods, and even the Hudson River which Charlie and his colleagues NYPD's Inspector Flannery (James Kirkwood) and Scotland Yard's Inspector Fife (H.B. Warner) cross in a police boat.
This film was released a year after "The Black Camel" and feels a lot livelier. For one, it is less drowned in dialogue relying a fair bit on visual storytelling. The shooting script reveals a lot about director John G. Blystone's style. There are plenty of mentions of sinister shadows and outlines of mysterious men stalking our heroes. In an interesting sound montage sequence, we follow a telephone signal as it bounces around from telephone pole to telephone pole all the way from New York to London. There is even an exciting scene in which a man driving a car is gassed to death and has a crash on a busy street. Furthermore, reading the shooting script indications, one gets an idea that the overall editing pace was much faster and the mise-en-scene less stagy.
A particular scene I am sorry we cannot see is very suspenseful even to read. It involves an almost James Bond situation in which a bad guy rigs up a gun to shoot at a particular chair at a particular moment. Seated in the chair is Charlie Chan, oblivious to the danger. The intercutting between Chan's dialogue with the bad guy and the gun about to go off is positively Hitchcockian.
The production stills also show off a well-designed movie. The art-deco sets by Gordon Wiles look slick and appropriately lush for a film set among the New York jet set. I wonder if Joseph August's cinematography would have been as shadowy and atmospheric as the script suggests, however.
On the subject of the script, it is much better, storytelling-wise, than "The Black Camel". For one, Charlie Chan is immediately involved and positioned clearly as the protagonist and the man in charge of the investigation. Second, the story is told more clearly and dynamically. Third, the suspects are much better profiled and are more memorable so that when the killer is revealed we don't have to rewind the film to figure out who they are.
Less ingratiating, however, are some of the script's racial insensitivities. A lot has already been written about the problem of racism in Charlie Chan films. I don't intend to go into it and instead suggest Yunte Huang's terrific book which examines the matter with intelligence and calm not usually exhibited with such hotly-debated topics.
However, one thing is for certain, in all the films Charlie Chan is presented squarely as a positive character, a role model, and a person who dispels all negative prejudices held by his contemporaries. In "Charlie Chan's Chance", however, we have, for the only time that I know of, examples of uncontested racist statements. Passing showgirls refer to Charlie as "chop suey" and quip that they have "no laundry today". Uncharacteristically, Charlie merely stands back and takes the insults.
Also uncharacteristic of the series is the presence of a very cliched Asian villain in the form of Li Gung (Edward Peil, Sr.), the kind of devious and untrustworthy foreigner stereotype that Charlie Chan was expressly created to oppose.
Furthermore, some distinctly 1930s cringeworthy dialogue seeps into the script. Asked about his family full of boys Charlie says that he has been lucky. Pointing to his daughters he quips "Out of eleven opportunities, I've been unfortunate three times". How strange to hear such derogatory statements about his family from Charlie himself.
"Charlie Chan's Chance" is certainly a film of its time but if we put that aside we are still left with what promises to have been a very fine picture indeed. Livelier and more engaging than "The Black Camel" and better plotted than "Charlie Chan in London". I suspect that if we had the good fortune to see it, I'd end up rating it a 6.5. - DirectorHamilton MacFaddenStarsWarner OlandHeather AngelRoger ImhofWhen a good-for-nothing man named Dan is stabbed to death and his arm broken, Charlie Chan is on the case. His first clue comes from the victim's sister, who noticed a prowler wearing a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch.Unlike the two films flanking it, "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" was not reconstructed for the DVD box set. This is a strange decision seeing how its script is easily the most suitable to being turned into an audio play with its heavy reliance on dialogue. The shooting script (available for reading on the excellent Charlie Chan Family Home website) indeed reads like a stageplay. The scenes are long and talky and begin with characters walking into a room and don't end until everyone has left. There is little evidence of the dynamics present in "Charlie Chan's Chance" and because of that "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" feels like a significant step back.
Despite its title, the story, based on Earl Derr Biggers' novel, is not really all that great. It is a very straightforward and simplistic parlour mystery which revolves around the murder of Dan Winterslip (Robert Warwick), a rich layabout who wiles away his days in his fancy Hawaiian mansion. There are few twists in this tale, especially when compared to the much more engaging mysteries of the preceding four films.
Furthermore, here we encounter the most thoroughly unlikeable supporting cast of any Charlie Chan film consisting of Puritans, racists, and entitled rich people none of whom are in the least bit fleshed out or even clearly defined.
The dialogue written for them is equally to blame for just how fake and thin these characters seem. They incessantly describe themselves and explain their actions in bursts of declarative exposition. The funniest moment in the entire script is when a gangster walks into a scene and immediately announces that he's sick of Hawaii and that he has to "get back to New York and the mob". If that isn't stereotypical enough production stills reveal that he is dressed in a pin-stripe suit and that he sports a snarl on his face at all times.
On the other hand, the production stills and the few bits of surviving footage also reveal a handsomely photographed film. The director of photography was Ernest Palmer who also photographed the atmospheric "Charlie Chan in Paris". The director, meanwhile, was Hamilton MacFadden who also helmed the stagy but picturesque "The Black Camel" which similarly featured a hacky script but was turned into a decent film largely due to MacFadden's solid work.
The camera directions in the shooting script, however, reveal a less visually enticing film. A lot of the scenes are played in long, static shots which the actors walk in and out of like players on a theatrical stage. MacFadden seems to have embraced the idea that you should only cut when you absolutely cannot pan and that if you don't even have to pan all the better!
The script for "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" is fairly forgettable and bland but I don't want to give the impression that it is entirely meritless. For one, it is a rare Charlie Chan film that actually takes place in Honolulu and the script actually does a good job of showing Charlie working on his home turf.
There are a few terrific scenes showing the Chan family life. I especially love the one in which Charlie's numerous family help him get ready in the morning when he is unexpectedly woken up by a telephone call. The final scene in which the entire Chan Clan is packed into a single car must have also been a scream. I also found the portrayal of the life of ex-pats living in Hawaii quite interesting if not sufficiently fleshed out.
Still, there's no escaping that I had no interest in the story whatsoever. Couple that with a smaller amount of screen time for Warner Oland and a supporting cast full of shrill, unlikeable characters, I doubt that "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" was anywhere close to his greatest film. I think this one would be rated somewhere around a 5. - DirectorEugene FordeGeorge HaddenStarsWarner OlandDrue LeytonDonald WoodsCharlie 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.There was clearly a fear from the Fox producers in the 1930s that Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective, could not carry a picture on his own. That must be why the first five Chan films, all based on Earl Derr Biggers novels, always have a white protagonist accompanying Chan and sometimes even doing most of the detecting. All that would change with "Charlie Chan in London" but for now let's focus on "Charlie Chan's Courage", the last lost Chan film.
Much like "Charlie Chan in London", this is a take on the old manor house mystery trope. Here the manor in question is a lavish house in the Californian desert belonging to the thuggish financier J.P. Madden (Paul Harvey), nicknamed "the Wall Street plunger". The mystery at the centre of "Charlie Chan's Courage", however, is better than the one Charlie had to solve in London. It is, in fact, one of the more intriguing of the whole series as the question is not only whodunnit but also who was it done to?
Let me try to explain the complicated setup. Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) is asked by a jeweller (Reginald Mason) to deliver a priceless necklace to Madden's house. Chan, however, smells a rat and has the jeweller's son Bob (Donald Woods) go to Madden's house first. On arrival, Bob finds Madden absent from the house and a conspicuous bullet hole in the big man's bedroom.
The next twist comes the following morning when Madden in all of his brash glory shows up alive and well. Who was murdered then? Maybe the more prudent question is who will be murdered next?
But where is our hero? The indefatigable Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police. Well, in the kitchen. You see, he disguises himself as an itinerant Chinese worker and secures himself a job as Madden's cook. This could be an interesting premise for a detective film (indeed "Murder, She Said" did it to perfection some 30 years later) but I'm not entirely convinced "Charlie Chan's Courage" pulled it off as well.
For one, most of the screen time is devoted to Bob and his flirtation with Paula (Drue Leyton), a woman he meets on the train and immediately falls in love with. Meanwhile, Chan skulks in the background observing and "narrowing his eyes" which is about as much action as the script gives him before the big finale.
There is a lot of mysterious goings-on in the Madden household. Interesting scenes all of which seem to end with Charlie being revealed in the background "giving a smile and a nod". Not quite what I hope to get out of a Charlie Chan picture.
He also spends most of the film affecting the sing-songy, "me no likey dlinky" accent he so derisively dismissed as a racist stereotype in "Charlie Chan in Paris". This too might be unfortunate.
But the story is so damn good that I'm willing to believe the film could have been a real corker. The mystery constantly twists and turns and whenever you think you know what's going on new characters show up to blow your theory to smithereens. The solution is quite ridiculous, of course, but it has that old-school golden age of mystery charm to it.
Unfortunately, the closest we can get to seeing this film is by watching the reconstruction done for the DVD box set. Like the reconstruction of "Charlie Chan's Chance", it's an audio performance of the original screenplay illustrated with production photos and photoshopped composites.
The acting in this one is better than in the first one but there are a lot more liberties taken with the script and several glaring mistakes. A character who should be arriving "from Chicago" instead goes "to Chicago". More egregiously, a parrot who used to live in a "barroom" is described as formerly occupying a "bedroom".
Still, the mystery is so engaging and fun that I was willing to forget the reconstruction's errors and go along with it. Of the three lost films, this one has the tightest, most entertaining script and based on that I think the film could have gotten a 6.5 from me despite the egregious lack of Charlie Chan. - DirectorEugene FordeStarsWarner OlandDrue LeytonRay MillandCharlie visits a wealthy country home in England. Suspects in the murder range from a housekeeper, to a stableman, to a lawyer.The brilliant Chinese detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) is in London receiving an award for his work on a previous case when he is visited by a young lady in distress. Seeing how Chan is a perfect gentleman, he is unable to refuse her tearful pleadings for help and soon finds himself investigating a murder involving German spies, the RAF, and top-secret military plans.
Set in a lavish countryside mansion during the hunting season, "Charlie Chan in London" has more than a whiff of Agatha Christie about it. In fact, it is rather reminiscent of her story "The Incredible Theft" which was first published some three years later.
The young lady who came to Chan for help is one Pamela Gray (Drue Leyton), the sister of a man accused of murdering his employer, RAF Captain Hamilton, and awaiting execution despite maintaining his innocence. Chan, in his usual shrewd manner, ingratiates himself among England's societal elite by pretending to be nothing more than a "humble Chinese detective".
"Charlie Chan in London" is the sixth Charlie Chan film starring Warner Oland but unfortunately only the second still in existence. Comparing it to "The Black Camel", you can see that the film series has evolved somewhat and become a lot more confident both in its tone and its leading character. This sixth instalment strikes a much better mix of humour and mystery.
The story, from an original script by Philip MacDonald, is stronger than the one in "The Black Camel". It is an early Charlie Chan take on the old manor house mystery (done a lot better in some later instalments such as "Castle in the Desert") and MacDonald uses the tropes to his advantage. The story is familiar and the villain predictable but it is a lot of fun to watch. I especially appreciated the variation of the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.
On the technical side, most of the kinks of the early talkies have been ironed out by 1934. The camera work is smoother, the mise-en-scene is a lot less stagy, and the performances have been toned down with the exception of the comic relief characters who often feel like they've stepped down directly off a music hall stage.
Having said that, the one major advantage "The Black Camel" has over "Charlie Chan in London" is its inventive director Hamilton MacFadden. This instalment, meanwhile, was directed by Eugene Ford whose work is distinctly more workmanlike and less dynamic. Consequently, the film lacks the sinister, mysterious atmosphere that made "The Black Camel" such an enjoyable watch.
I must also confess that I preferred Warner Oland's performance in the earlier film as well. He is still a very charming and likeable protagonist but he has lost some of his commanding presence. This film plays up the whole "humble detective" schtick making Chan a lot less intimidating and interesting character than before.
Still, "Charlie Chan in London" is a very entertaining entry in the series mostly due to its engaging mystery and solid supporting cast (including a very young Ray Milland). It is a less distinctive and significantly less atmospheric movie than "The Black Camel" but the story is a lot better, the pace less leaden, and the production is moving away from the awkwardness of the early talkies.
6.5/10 - DirectorLewis SeilerHamilton MacFaddenStarsWarner OlandMary BrianThomas BeckHired to investigate forged bonds, Charlie is thwarted by the murder of his undercover agent, but the arrival of son Lee helps him uncover the true culprits.The seventh Charlie Chan film, "Charlie Chan in Paris" finally completes the formula by introducing Charlie's number one son Lee (Keye Luke) into the equation. Even though Lee would eventually be supplanted by the even more incompetent Jimmy, a comic relief sidekick became a staple of the series as much as Charlie's Confucian sayings.
The character of the bumbling sidekick clearly takes root from the hapless Kashimo, a Honolulu PD rookie who assists Chan in the original Earl Derr Biggers novels and in the film adaptation of "The Black Camel" where he was played by Otto Yamaoka. But Lee Chan is a considerable improvement over his progenitor in pretty much every way. For one, Keye Luke plays him not as a mindless idiot but as an enthusiastic young man whose mistakes and goofs can be excused by his lack of experience. He is a much more believable character than the cartoonish Kashimo whom Charlie himself found as annoying as I did. The other reason is the loving relationship between Charlie and Lee which Oland and Luke play beautifully and which adds an unexpected dollop of warmth to what is otherwise a pretty rote mystery movie.
The story sees Charlie (Warner Oland) arriving in Paris to investigate a series of forged bonds being spread around Europe from a Parisian branch of the venerable Lamartine Bank. As soon as he lands, however, he is greeted by a threatening letter and a sinister blind beggar who seems to appear wherever Charlie goes.
The film moves at a decent enough pace but the story by Philip MacDonald simply didn't grab me as much as that of "Charlie Chan in London". Banknote forgery is not a terribly exciting crime and seeing Charlie Chan go up against organized bandits is less interesting to me than seeing him face a more human killer.
Furthermore, even though the first murder occurs as early as 12 minutes into the picture it is not until the second murder some 40 minutes in that there's any sense of momentum or plot progression. The film devotes a lot of time to its supporting cast which would be commendable if any of them were well-developed or even clearly delineated characters but since all of these bankers and Haute société minglers look, talk, and dress the same I had the devil of a time keeping stock of who was who.
Once the investigation gets fully on track, there's a lot of fun to be had with "Charlie Chan in Paris". I enjoyed seeing Charlie breaking into a victim's apartment and hiding from the police. I loved all the scenes with Charlie and Lee. I especially enjoyed the final 10 minutes in which Charlie finally faces the sinister beggar in the sewers of Paris. However, it's not a terribly good sign that once the killer was unmasked I couldn't actually remember who the character was.
Compared to its immediate predecessor, "Charlie Chan in London", this Parisian adventure is less engrossing but better made. The film was directed by Lewis Seiler whose direction is a lot more atmospheric and dynamic. I also really enjoyed Warner Oland's performance here. After a somewhat buffoonish turn in the previous film, he is back to being the cunning, fearsome Chan we know and love. There's a particularly good moment in one of the earlier scenes in which one character assumes that because Charlie is Chinese he does not speak good English. Chan's takedown of the borderline-racist man is both hilariously polite and brutally cutting at the same time.
Like most of these early Chan films, "Charlie Chan in Paris" is not a top-tier Chan film but it is an enjoyable one and since by 1935 all the awkwardness of the early talkies has been overcome I don't feel the need to qualify that assessment. It has a nice atmosphere, a few truly entertaining scenes, and wonderful chemistry between Oland and Luke. If only the mystery was more engaging.
6/10 - DirectorLouis KingStarsWarner OlandPat PatersonThomas BeckWhile investigating the theft of antiquities from an ancient tomb excavation, Charlie discovers the body of the expedition's leader concealed inside the mummy's wrappings.As someone who is a massive fan of mysteries set in exotic locales, supernatural events which are then revealed to be clever ploys, and films revolving around archaeology, "Charlie Chan in Egypt" was almost destined to be a favourite. In fact, it reminded me a lot of one of my favourite Agatha Christie short stories, "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" in which, similarly, a group of archaeologists are picked off by a mysterious killer hiding his identity behind an ancient curse.
The script written by Robert Ellis and Helen Logan is not as inventive nor as airtight as Christie's story but it has a fantastically engaging mystery at its heart, an air of exoticism, and a rather ingenious method of murder employed by a very devious killer indeed.
The story is set in an archaeological camp led by Professor Arnold (George Irving), an indefatigable bloodhound on the trail of Ancient Egyptian treasures. One day, Professor Arnold leaves the camp never to return and his body is eventually found inside a sealed sarcophagus wrapped like a mummy. Charlie Chan (Warner Oland), the great Chinese detective, who is in Egypt on the trail of some priceless missing artefacts investigates.
With such a terrific location and a good, spooky story what could possibly go wrong? Well, a few things. The first is the rickety direction of Louis King, a rather unimaginative hired hand whose flat, sometimes stagy visuals do somewhat undermine the terrific story. He robs the picture of any atmosphere or eeriness it should have had.
Another problem is the character of Snowshoes, a bumbling camp servant, played by Stepin Fetchit. Fetchit was the most popular black comedian in the 1930s who specialized in playing crudely stereotypical comic relief characters. Now, if you can believe it, Snowshoes is actually one of his least racially insensitive caricatures but that does not make him any less annoying. His incomprehensible stuttery muttering schtick gets old very quickly and by the end of the film, I would wince whenever he'd show up. His presence is especially grating because the comic relief in this film rightfully should have been the terrific Keye Luke who had been introduced in the series as Charlie Chan's son in the previous instalment.
The rest of the film, however, is pretty good and I found it to be the most entertaining and intriguing of the Charlie Chan films so far. The story is solid, the solution clever (if predictable), the supporting cast up to the task, and Warner Oland absolutely magnificent. Charlie Chan is at his best when he's not played for jokes. Another excellent aspect of the film worth mentioning is the sets. Even though they were probably pilfered from higher-budgeted productions, they do a terrific job of suggesting the warm, sandy atmosphere of an Egyptian archaeological site.
7/10 - DirectorJames TinlingStarsWarner OlandIrene HerveyJon HallWhen a prominent official is murdered at a banquet honoring Charle Chan, the detective and son Lee team up to expose an opium-smuggling ring.It is a massive shame that despite its Chinese setting "Charlie Chan in Shanghai" does not have a single credited Chinese character besides the Chans themselves. All of the suspects are ex-pats, foreign policemen, and spies. Combined with some distinctly European-looking sets, this robs the film of any atmosphere of its exotic locale which was so wonderfully evoked in "Charlie Chan in Egypt".
This is the only major kink in what is otherwise a top-notch Charlie Chan film, a really entertaining and engaging little thriller in which the brilliant Chinese detective (Warner Oland) hunts for opium dealers in the deliciously grimy Shanghai underground. The gangsters are led by a shadowy Russian spy Ivan Marloff (Frederik Vogeding) who, we suspect, may have grander plans in sight than mere opium smuggling.
Note the two men who co-wrote this film: Edward T. Lowe Jr. and Gerard Fairlie. Fairlie is best known as one of the writers of the highly popular Bulldog Drummond novel series the title character of which is a WWI veteran travelling the world looking for excitement. There is a real taste of a Bulldog Drummond adventure in "Charlie Chan in Shanghai". There is an inordinate amount of peril. Charlie is shot at twice, kidnapped, and even engages in a fistfight! The villains are also Drummondian - mysterious spies, opium smugglers, filthy bandits, and gun-toting baddies.
Edward T. Lowe Jr., meanwhile, was an itinerant screenwriter best known to Chan fans as the man who co-wrote "Charlie Chan in Paris". Even a cursory glance at the synopsis of "Charlie Chan in Shanghai" can tell you that it is clearly a reworking of Lowe's previous scripts. Both films see Chan go up against an organized gang - the only difference is that in the previous film, the gang forged banknotes.
Thankfully, "Charlie Chan in Shanghai" is a resounding improvement over "Charlie Chan in Paris" in every way. The suspects are more clearly defined, the pace is faster, there is a much more tangible sense of urgency, and there is a bigger role for Lee Chan (Keye Luke), Charlie's honourable offspring whose unbound enthusiasm and clumsiness keep landing him in trouble.
The chemistry between Oland and Luke is again the highlight of the film. There is such genuine warmth, chemistry, and precise comic timing between them that their scenes together are an absolute joy to watch. Especially witty are the scenes in their shared hotel room where we simply observe a relationship between a traditional Chinese father and his thoroughly Americanised son. These scenes, unburdened of any actual plot importance, are an unfortunate rarity in thrillers. As can be seen here, however, they go a very long way in establishing the protagonists and making us care for them.
The film was directed by James Tinling whose work is decidedly workmanlike but more than acceptable. His visuals are uninventive and there is a distinct lack of atmosphere to the film, but he keeps the plot moving at a fittingly fast pace and there is a constant feeling of tension throughout.
"Charlie Chan in Shanghai" is a real early gem in the Charlie Chan series and a million miles away from the stagy, stodgy instalments of only a year ago. It is a dynamic, engaging, endlessly entertaining thriller that should be a delight even for those who've never even heard of Charlie Chan before. Not only is there a taut intrigue at its heart, but there are also a liberal dollop of humour and even a clever little locked-room mystery. Its solution is rudimentary but its presence is a welcome surprise.
Speaking of mystery, however, "Charlie Chan in Shanghai" is rather light on that particular ingredient. Most of the villains are known pretty much from the start as are their motivations. This is, however, perfectly in line with the Bulldog Drummond influence. Just like the Drummond novels/pictures, this film is more about the thrill of the hunt than the breed of the prey and that too is a rarity for Charlie Chan.
8/10 - DirectorGordon WilesStarsWarner OlandRosina LawrenceCharles QuigleyThe heir to a huge fortune is presumed drowned, then shows up, is then murdered."Mysterious shadows of the night cling to the old house like moss on a tombstone," says Charlie Chan (Warner Oland), the great Chinese detective, in his usual loquacious way as he approaches the eery Colby Manor where a dark and mysterious game is afoot. The heir to the massive family fortune, long thought dead, has resurrected and returned home only to be murdered mere minutes after his surprise arrival. His ghost, however, appears at a seance held at the request of his eccentric aunt and Chan's old friend Henrietta (Henrietta Crosman).
This spooky and intriguing mystery written by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, and Joseph Hoffman is the second and far more successful attempt at an old-fashioned manor house mystery after "Charlie Chan in London". Fittingly, there is more than a tinge of Agatha Christie present here as well. The terrific finale seems to have been at least inspired by "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor" in which Poirot pulls off a very similar trick as Charlie Chan.
But more than Christie, I was reminded of Nancy Drew, the fabulous girl detective who similarly investigated mysterious hauntings which turned out to have been accomplished by devious crooks with the help of secret passageways, mirrors, and hidden UV lamps. This is a delicious mystery indeed!
Most of the runtime is devoted to Charlie's explanations of the various supernatural goings-on at the Colby manor. Even though the solutions don't quite reach the cleverness of John Dickson Carr or even "Charlie Chan in Egypt", they are a lot of fun and Oland delivers them with grace and zest.
The final solution, however, - that of the killer's identity - is disappointingly predictable. The writers use the old trick of giving the killer the least runtime hoping that the audience will simply overlook them but that doesn't work anymore.
"Charlie Chan's Secret" is only the second film directed by Gordon Wiles, who didn't have a particularly notable career and died young in 1950. I am not surprised to find out he was also an art director as he seems more interested in showing off the sets than the actors' faces. Seriously, I have never seen such wide interior shots in my life. Frequently, we'll see shots of actors in the Colby manor living room, for instance, where the camera is pulled so far back that they appear minuscule in comparison to the looming walls around them. We also get a very good look at the ceilings of the house, a technique which Orson Welles would get a lot of praise for five years later.
Wiles is not a terribly good director. His shots are very stagy, his camera movements are stiff, and his pace leaden. Most of the dialogue scenes are awkwardly filmed in side-on wide shots in which the characters exit and enter like actors on a theatrical stage. Wiles inadvertently achieves a sort of cinematic proscenium, an impression that we're seated before a set and not observing a three-dimensional space.
He is also not a good director of actors. Besides Oland who gives a characteristically shrewd and well-considered performance, the entire supporting cast pitches their performances at absolutely melodramatic levels. Especially annoying is Herbert Mundin as a grating comic relief butler whose performance belongs in a very different movie indeed.
Thankfully, the rest of the visuals in "Charlie Chan's Secret" are superlative. The sets designed by Duncan Cramer and Albert Hogsett are especially good. The Colby manor is designed almost like an expressionist nightmare with its crooked windows, high arches, and no straight lines. Cinematographer Rudolph Mate lights the sets especially atmospherically making them some of the most effective in the entire Charlie Chan series. They are a delight to watch!
"Charlie Chan's Secret" is a strange film. It has an engaging mystery and some of the best visuals in the whole series but is directed in such an artificial and stodgy manner that it almost turns into a self-parody of 1930s movies. It is stiff and occasionally plodding but delightfully atmospheric and entertaining. Had it been directed by a more dynamic and skilled director it would have no doubt been the highlight of the Charlie Chan film series. As it stands, it's a creeky but effective curio that occasionally dips quite ably into horror territory.
7.5/10 - DirectorHarry LachmanStarsWarner OlandKeye LukeGeorge BrasnoWhile visiting the circus with his family, Charlie is recruited by the big top's co-owner to investigate threatening letters that he's received.In the 1930s, everybody got to go to the circus. Charlie Chaplin went in his wonderful film "The Circus", as did Laurel and Hardy in "The Chimp". The Marx Brothers followed suit in 1939 as did W.C. Fields in the largely forgotten but worthy "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man".
Charlie Chan's turn at the circus came in 1936 with "Charlie Chan at the Circus", one of the more roundly entertaining and enjoyable of the Chan films starring Warner Oland. This is the first Charlie Chan film I ever saw, one afternoon on TV when I was 9, and it's absolutely no surprise that I immediately fell in love with the great Chinese detective. Put in the appropriate verbiage - this film is an absolute gas!
The story, written by the now very experienced duo of Robert Ellis and Helen Logan, sees Charlie and his number one son Lee (Keye Luke) join the circus in pursuit of a dangerous murderer who is using the circus animals to do his evil bidding. No one is safe from him, not even Charlie who has a wonderfully suspenseful encounter with a venomous snake in his bed.
But the story is not what really counts here. "Charlie Chan at the Circus" very much swings the tonal pendulum towards comedy. It is a film full of wonderful, perfectly executed gags and running jokes.
The star of the show is, without a doubt, Keye Luke who proves once again that Lee Chan is the finest comic relief character the series has. Not only is he charming and instantly loveable as the over-eager and trouble-prone number-one son, but he is also adept at physical comedy which sees him go from one slapstick situation to the next.
My favourite running joke of the film, however, is Lee's fruitless pursuit of the circus contortionist Su Toy (Toshia Mori). In a bid to get close to her, he tries to turn himself into a human pretzel, much to the amusement of his father who quips that his attitude proves Darwin's theory correct.
Indeed, circus performers are extraordinarily well used in "Charlie Chan at the Circus" not merely as sideshow attractions but as likeable characters in their own right. The best in the show are George and Olive Brasno, a couple of little people whose comedic timing and patter make them resemble stars from screwball comedies. The film devotes a lot of time to them, rightfully trusting their abilities to light up the screen.
The film is well directed by Harry Lachman who would go on to helm a number of Chan films. His direction is not flashy or artsy nor does it call attention to itself, but it is dynamic, technically adept, and occasionally even quite atmospheric. That is why I would say that this is the best directed Chan film so far. Unassuming but wonderfully effective.
The mystery itself is not one of the best in the series. Coming on the heels of the much more intriguing "Charlie Chan's Secret", it even appears somewhat pedestrian. The solution itself is silly, while the killer's identity is impossible to figure out due to a lack of clues and careful preparation.
But the sheer joy and good humour of "Charlie Chan at the Circus" overrides the weak story. It is a fun, often hilarious romp, perfectly paced and continuously entertaining. It even offers the rare pleasure of seeing the entire Chan clan together in the memorable opening scene in which all fourteen walk into the circus together like a marching band.
8.5/10 - DirectorH. Bruce HumberstoneStarsWarner OlandKeye LukeHelen WoodWhen a friend of Charlie's is found kicked to death by his own race horse on board a Honolulu-bound liner, the detective discovers foul play and uncovers an international gambling ring.The murder of a horse-owner friend sends the great Chinese detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) into Dick Francis territory. Maybe the fact that I never much cared for Francis' equestrian thrillers explains why I found "Charlie Chan at the Race Track" such hard going or maybe it just isn't all that engaging a movie.
The story revolves around a dastardly scheme to cheat at the Melbourne Cup. The villains' plot is explained several times but I found my attention drifting. Lots of horse talk will do that to me. I generally don't care much for sports or betting and this film did nothing to pique my curiosity.
The horse owner discovered the plot and was murdered on the ship bound for Melbourne. Charlie Chan boards the ship in Honolulu and begins an investigation of those present. There are plenty of suspects in this film - family members, trainers, jockeys, and businessmen - but there's surprisingly little mystery. Of the two bad guys involved in the murder, one is revealed right at the beginning of the film and the other is so obvious that you could identify him merely by glancing at the photos of the cast. You just couldn't imagine that actor playing anyone but a villain.
The script by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, and Edward T. Lowe Jr. does not keep us in suspense. Mysterious events are introduced and then immediately explained away. The villains' plot is clear as day from the moment it's hinted at and Charlie explains exactly how they'll pull it off before the race even begins. There is some interesting business involving the technology of the time - cameras that are meant to capture the finish of the race - and some early forensics, but beyond those, there's very little sleuthing going on in this film.
Also lacking is the humour. Keye Luke is, as usual, wonderful as the overenthusiastic number one son Lee but the material he's given is not as varied nor as witty as before. The running joke of him being undercover as a ship steward quickly grows thin and beyond that, there's little for him to do. Of course, his interactions with Warner Oland are still the high point of the film. However, compared with his antics from "Charlie Chan at the Circus" where he was not only in pursuit of a murderer while dressed up as a nanny but also in pursuit of a beautiful contortionist, the repetitive stuff he has to do here seems awfully underwhelming.
Also present as comic relief is John Henry Allen, a second-rate Stepin Fetchit impersonator who does Fetchit's already annoying mumbling routine with even less charm. The less said about his performance the better except to note that he is roundly outacted by his pet monkey who looks damn cute in his little sailor outfit.
I don't want to rag on this picture too much because it's not really a bad film. It's a handsomely mounted production, well-designed, and well-directed by H. Bruce Humberstone who exhibits the kind of unassuming professionalism I like in Charlie Chan films.
However, I also found "Charlie Chan at the Race Track" to be a distinctly unengaging film which poorly reproduces a lot of the schtick from its better predecessors and then infuses it into an overly complicated story full of bland, forgettable suspects and lacking any real sense of mystery or threat.
One gets the idea that Charlie enjoyed his cruise but a nice holiday does not make a thrilling detective movie and I personally hope not to have to take this journey again.
6/10 - DirectorH. Bruce HumberstoneStarsWarner OlandBoris KarloffKeye LukeA dangerous amnesiac escapes from an asylum, hides in the opera house, and is suspected of getting revenge on those who tried to murder him 13 years ago."Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff," proudly proclaim the opening credits of "Charlie Chan at the Opera", a most ambitious and unusual Chan film, a delightful mixture of horror and mystery, of the operatic and the cinematic.
The opening sequence wastes no time establishing the film's grandiose gothic tone. We open on a dark and stormy night. A Dutch-angle close-up shows the sign of the Rockland State Sanitarium awash with rain and lit by a single gas lamp. The gloomy building is guarded by a pair of spooked guards hiding under the eaves from the torrential storm. Their voices are muffled by the raging wind but a sound cuts right through its midnight howl. It is the sound of singing emanating from the room of an amnesiac patient (Boris Karloff).
It is a masterful opening straight out of one of those Universal horror films or a Val Lewton chiller. Of course, by the end of it, Karloff has escaped his confinement, his flight motivated by a newspaper article announcing the opening night of an opera starring Mme. Lili Rochelle (Margaret Irving). The entire police force is up in arms chasing the escaped madman but the one place where they aren't looking is the city's opera house, the very place the man is headed to.
So where does Charlie Chan fit in this gothic horror film? Well, he is on holiday in the States with his overenthusiastic number one son Lee (Keye Luke) when he is invited to the premiere by Mme. Lili herself. The great prima donna has been receiving threatening messages and she begs Charlie and his good friend Inspector Regan (Guy Usher) to find out who has been sending them.
The two plots converge during the opening night and by the end of the first act there are two dead bodies in the theatre. The police come down upon the opera house like rain in the opening sequence looking for Karloff but Charlie has other ideas in mind. Will he be able to find the true killer by the end of the third act? You know the answer...
Set largely over the course of three or so hours inside the opera house, "Charlie Chan at the Opera" is quite simply one of the tautest and most exciting of the Warner Oland Chan films. Written by Scott Darling, Charles Belden, and Bess Meredyth, the script does a wonderful job of emulating the plot of an opera with its lost daughters, love triangles, and crimes from the past coming back to haunt their perpetrators. The innate theatricality of the Chan films suits this script extremely well.
The mystery itself is also one of the best with a convincing and memorable cast of suspects and one hell of a red herring in the form of Boris Karloff. His performance is a tad too broad for my taste but his presence is tremendous and his sinister silkiness perfect for the role of the mysterious amnesiac. The revelation is definitely too rushed to be clearly understood but by that point, we're so enraptured with the whole premise we don't really care for all the details.
Warner Oland, however, has definitely brought his A-game for this cinematic clash. This is easily his finest performance as Charlie Chan, quietly commanding, mellifluous, charming yet enigmatic. He never lets his mask of perfect politeness slip and yet he is consistently doubtlessly in charge of the investigation. The Chan we see here is a far more serious figure than he has been in the past few films. He is a lot closer to the way he was portrayed in "The Black Camel", for instance, where he let others play the comedy while he was deadly serious.
There is a lot less comedy in "Charlie Chan at the Opera" in general. The role of the comic relief is split between the wonderful Keye Luke and a newcomer, Sgt. Kelly (William Demarest), the kind of two-fisted dumb cop that's been the but of jokes in detective films from Sherlock Holmes to Philip Marlowe and beyond. Also very funny is the wiry, neurotic stage manager Mr Arnold (Maurice Cass). Anyone who's ever been behind the scenes of a theatre can vouch that his character is 100% authentic. They all do a good job of keeping the spirits up but the film really shines in its more sinister, mysterious scenes.
Director H. Bruce Humberstone keeps the proceedings moving at a fast tempo. His direction is slick and smooth without ever being flashy or distracting. He is a skilled professional who delivers an entertaining, engaging, and atmospheric thriller.
I was also fascinated by all the little technical details Humberstone manages to squeeze into the film. There is a terrific shot in which we see the opera being performed while stagehands run around in the background making the magic happen on stage. Another very interesting scene involves a newspaperman (Selmer Jackson) explaining how photos are sent by wire from one city to the next. Fascinating stuff and cleverly integrated into a taut, tense mystery picture.
"Charlie Chan at the Opera" is frequently named the best Chan film of all time. I'm not sure I agree entirely with that statement (some of the Toler films are definitely even slicker and smarter) but its reputation is not entirely overblown. It is by far the best of the Oland films and just about as good as a B-movie could be in 1936. With its wonderful sets (designed by Duncan Cramer and Lewis Creber) and some atmospheric, moody cinematography from Lucien N. Andriot, it is also a most pleasing film to look at which can't be said for all the early Chans.
Special mention, of course, must be made of "Carnival", the opera performed in the film and composed specially for the occasion by Oscar Levant. It is a tad repetitive but the fact that I've been humming it ever since I first saw the film around the age of 10 is by far the highest praise I can give it and the best indicator of its haunting qualities.
9/10 - DirectorH. Bruce HumberstoneStarsWarner OlandKatherine DeMillePauline MooreWhen a strategically important new aerial guidance system is stolen, Charlie traces it to the Berlin Olympics, where he has to battle spies and enemy agents to retrieve it.After defeating murderers, counterfeiters, opium dealers, and horse-race fixers, the great Chinese detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) finally comes face to face with foreign spies in "Charlie Chan at the Olympics", a lean, furiously fast romp which will doubtlessly entertain Chan fans and casual viewers alike.
The film also functions as a historical curio with its 1936 Berlin Olympics setting. No mentions of Nazism are made and great care is taken to blot out even the slightest hint of a swastika but through some terrific use of archival footage director H. Bruce Humberstone evokes the exciting atmosphere of the last international sporting event before the outbreak of war.
The film also has the edgy, nervous atmosphere of these pre-war years when the conflict seemed to be at once inevitable and delayed. There is a real air of paranoia permeating the picture. Wherever Charlie turns he runs into a foreign spy and even the helpful Berlin policemen (who are most definitely not portrayed as Nazis) seem to know more than they are telling. There is definitely a sinister undercurrent beneath the standard good-humoured antics of Charlie and his hilariously overenthusiastic number-one son Lee (Keye Luke).
The story begins with the dramatic theft of a device which allows planes in the air to be radio-controlled by men on the ground. "Would be great blessing if all war fought with machinery instead of human beings," comments Charlie.
Since the theft took place during the device's testing in Hawaii, the case falls under the purview of Charlie Chan who immediately finds the thief albeit dead in his hotel room. He correctly deduces that the device has changed hands and that the real villain must have left Honolulu in a haste.
Soon enough, Charlie zeroes in on three possible suspects all of whom are on board a ship bound for Berlin. Also on the ship is Lee, an amateur detective and swimmer on the US Olympic team.
The script, written by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, and Paul Burger, moves at a furious pace from one set piece to the next, changing locations with every reel. The final showdown happens in Berlin but not before Charlie follows clues from Honolulu to the ship to the Olympics themselves.
This is an astoundingly dynamic Charlie Chan film never letting up its considerable tension or running out of steam. There are enemies lurking in every shadow and Charlie has to keep on his toes to outwit them time after time. This is one of those spy yarns where even twists have twists within them. It's a very well-constructed and conceived script with a taut plot, a memorable batch of suspects, and lots of picturesque locations.
Also characteristically excellent is the interplay between Oland and Luke whose humorous screwball patter is only bolstered by evident chemistry and warmth.
The supporting cast is first-rate as well. Katherine DeMille makes for a wonderful femme fatale, enigmatic and sexy. Pauline Moore is charismatic as the ingenue. Meanwhile, C. Henry Gordon, always a welcome presence in a Chan flick, is wonderfully mysterious as the sinister Arthur Hughes who spends the entire film skulking about like Nosferatu.
My favourite performance comes courtesy of Morgan Wallace. He plays the silky spymaster who almost outplays Charlie at his own game - politeness which hides a devious mind.
"Charlie Chan at the Olympics" is now best remembered for its setting and archival glimpses at the games and the Hindenbur which is Charlie's preferred method of travel to Germany. However, this film is far from a museum piece. It's a clever, funny, endlessly entertaining spy yarn full of humour, excitement, and charm. The script is twisty and H. Bruce Humberstone's direction is pacy and slick. This is indeed a top-tier Chan.
8.5/10 - DirectorEugene FordeStarsWarner OlandKeye LukeJoan MarshReturning from European exile where she avoided testifying against her criminal associates, a former singer with a tell-all diary is murdered to ensure her silence.09-04-2023
Despite its title, "Charlie Chan on Broadway" does not see the great Chinese detective investigate the world of spotlights and songs. This is not his great return to the theatrical stage. Instead, the Broadway of this film is that of nightclubs and gangsters, sultry dames and journalistic hounds. The film tries to emulate the quick-talking, double-crossing, screwball mysteries about sharp newspapermen and their scoops. It is mostly successful in that the dialogue is terrific as is the supporting cast but Charlie Chan and his number one son Lee feel a little too much like fish out of water.
The screenplay, credited to five separate writers including Chan stalwarts Robert Ellis and Helen Logan seems to be aware of this. A very funny running joke sees Lee (Keye Luke) acting as an interpreter translating the sing-songy New York patter to a baffled Charlie and unravelling Charlie's aphorisms to the bemused New Yorkers.
The fast-moving plot begins, as many Chan films seem to, on a ship where a femme fatale wonderfully named Billie Bronson (Louise Henry) realizes her life is in danger. She's a former gangster's moll who hightailed it out of New York some years ago. Now, she's coming back hoping to sell her tell-all diary to the press.
Of course, someone gets to her before she reaches her scoop-hungry editor but the killer gets away empty-handed. Wise to the danger, Billie took the precaution of hiding her diary in the luggage of a fellow passenger - none other than Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) himself.
I found the first half of the film in which the complicated plot and its many characters are slowly revealed very entertaining indeed. There is something undeniably electric about 1930s New York and all the mooks and wiseguys hanging around in it that just makes for good cinema.
The dialogue is very good as well full of clever double talk and funny gags. Most of it is delivered with charm and skill by Joan Marsh and Donald Woods as a pair of competing journalists after the same story.
The high point of the film, however, is without a doubt Harold Huber, a very energetic and funny actor who holds the distinction of playing four different goofy cops in four different Charlie Chan films. Here, in his first appearance in the series, he shines as the fast-talking Inspector Nelson. I especially like how, despite being a comic relief character, Nelson is never played as a fool. Unlike similar characters in the previous films, Nelson is shown as being quite capable in his job and deserving of respect from Charlie. The two work alongside each other very well and the film ends with them as firm friends.
The second half of the film in which Charlie finally begins his investigation is significantly less interesting. I would not say that the story of "Charlie Chan on Broadway" is bad but merely that it's so straightforward, familiar, and conventional that it never really grabbed me.
The film is also full of missed opportunities. For instance, far too much of it is set in hotel rooms and offices instead of having Charlie and Lee truly trawl through the seedy 1930s New York. It should be noted, however, that director Eugene Forde doesn't do a great job of making the studio sets come alive. Unlike his immediate predecessor H. Bruce Humberstone, Forde's direction is rather flat and workmanlike. He uses the same kind of camerawork and lighting in the nightclub scenes as he does in the hotel room scenes making both feel like soundstages.
Another missed opportunity lies in the fact that there's little for Keye Luke to do. After an entertaining but brief sequence in which he tries to get into a nightclub without a date, he is relegated to being little more than a glorified extra. The presence of Toshia Mori who played his love interest in "Charlie Chan at the Circus" made me think that a similar subplot would occur here but she only appears in the film for a single scene.
Later on, an intriguing possibility is raised when the police arrest Lee under the suspicion of murder. Had this plot been followed, the rest of the story could have developed into a true rarity for the series - a story in which Charlie Chan has to work against the police to prove his son innocent. Sadly, the notion is dispelled almost immediately.
Speaking of Charlie, he too is relegated to the background for a lot of this film. There is an awful lot going on here with the rival journalists, the cops, and the gangsters all looking for the same MacGuffin. Meanwhile, our hero seems to spend most of the film merely observing the action instead of participating in it. True, he gets his moment to shine while delivering his terrific final summation but can this film truly be called "Charlie Chan on Broadway" if Charlie spends all of it silently sitting in a hotel room? The lack of Oland is not as severe as it would be in the next film but his subtle, anchoring performance is definitely missing from some of the film's more scatterbrained moments.
Coming on the heels of some of the very best Charlie Chan films ever made, "Charlie Chan on Broadway" is a bit of a disappointment. It's far from a bad film but it is a bit too conventional and unremarkable for its own good. As the most typical of all Warner Oland Charlie Chan films, it is still bound to provide a lot of entertainment value but I doubt it would stick in a lot of people's memories.
6/10 - DirectorEugene FordeStarsWarner OlandKeye LukeVirginia FieldAlthough Charlie and Lee are in Monaco for an art exhibit, they become caught up in a feud between rival financiers which involves the Chans in a web of blackmail and murder."Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" is only significant for being Warner Oland's final movie. This wonderful, subtle yet unquestionably commanding actor died in 1938. Otherwise, Oland's 16th outing as the great Chinese detective is an absolute dud, an astoundingly boring picture which tries very hard to overcompensate for its star's failing health.
Warner Oland had been a notorious alcoholic for many years and by 1937 his condition had worsened noticeably. The previous two Charlie Chan films both tried to reduce Oland's screentime through some clever use of the supporting cast and comic relief characters. However, by the time "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" rolled around, there was simply no hiding the fact that Oland was just out of it.
In more ways than one, as well, since Oland is barely in this film. Most of the actual investigating is handled by either the number one son Lee (Keye Luke) or the Monte Carlo chief of police Jules Joubert (Harold Huber). When Oland actually does make an appearance, he is always accompanied by either Luke or Huber who get most of the dialogue.
Oland's presence barely registers on screen. His delivery is unusually flat, his timing is completely off, and he lacks that tactful sharpness he had in the previous films. He even seems to be physically weaker than before as he spends a lot of his scenes sitting down or leaning on tables, chairs, or other actors. He also appears to be about as interested in the plot as I was, but more about that a bit later.
In order to compensate for Oland's mental absence, the writers Charles Belden and Jerome Cady, beef up the supporting characters of Lee and Joubert. A similar undertaking was evident even in the previous film but "Charlie Chan on Broadway" was bolstered by the presence of Joan Marsh and Donald Woods, a very likeable character played by Harold Huber, and some interesting locations. No such luck here!
Keye Luke is a wonderfully talented actor, possessed of terrific comedic timing and a knack for physical comedy. However, without Charlie Chan there to act as the straight man, Lee Chan's usual schtick simply falls flat. He has a lot more screen time here than in most of the previous films but Belden and Cady don't give him anything new to do. He merely repeats gags from previous films including being mistaken for a murderer, getting chased by angry porters, and falling about a lot.
The charm and appeal of the Lee Chan character are not his klutziness or his stupidity. It is the warmth and affection he shares with his father. The scenes between Oland and Luke were the emotional glue which held the previous film together. Here, however, it can hardly be said that they share scenes. It feels more like Luke carrying the scenes while Oland sits back and occasionally delivers a line.
Also prominently featured in the film is Harold Huber who was so wonderful in "Charlie Chan on Broadway". There, he played a fast-talking, wiseguy New York cop, a very funny character who despite being the film's comic relief was never played as a fool.
Here, he plays another fast-talking cop, this time a cocky French chief of police eager to show off the efficiency of the Monte Carlo police but constantly finding himself embarrassed by his blundering underlings. While such a character could be humorous, Belden and Cady's script again fails in delivering original and funny jokes. Instead, they have Huber blubber and bluster his way through reams of jibberish while shouting at the top of his voice. As you might guess, this becomes tiring very quickly.
The plot, revolving around the theft of 200,000 USD worth of bonds is far too thin and underdeveloped to satisfactorily fill out a 75-minute movie. To say that little happens over the course of "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" would be to oversell this film's excitement levels. This is one boring movie, lacking in both mystery and intrigue! It plods along through scenes which move at the speed of molasses. Watch as a secretary counts out the bonds one by one... Watch as Charlie and Joubert shake hands very, very, very slowly... Watch as a taxi driver struggles to start his car time and time again...
Belden and Cady do stumble upon one funny gag which revolves around the fact that Charlie Chan can't speak French and Lee thinks that he can. This is a genuinely funny joke and Oland and Luke play the comedy well. Unfortunately, the writers then proceed to hammer the joke to death by repeating it every five or so minutes. Watch as Charlie and Lee try to get into a casino... Watch as Charlie and Lee try to alert a policeman to a dead body... Watch as Charlie and Lee try to order breakfast...
Not all of the film's faults can be laid at the writers' door, however. I would go amiss without mentioning the listless direction from Eugene Forde. Forde, who was always one of the duller Chan directors, here outdoes himself. The film's pace is leaden, the visuals flat and uninteresting, and the performances absolutely theatrical.
True, even a much better director would struggle to make much out of a script this dull but I'm sure that H. Bruce Humberstone could have at least made a film that moved quickly and was pleasing to look at. Forde's direction makes the Monte Carlo casino floor look like a high school mess hall.
"Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" is without a doubt the worst of the Oland Chan films. It is a slow, unengaging slog that wastes two of the series' funniest actors (Luke and Huber) and suffers from the lack of the central anchoring presence of Warner Oland who sleepwalks through his scenes.
I must confess that as the obvious plot slowly unfolded and Huber continued to shout and Luke continued to fall about, I became sleepy myself. Looking into Oland's expressionless eyes, I sympathized with the man's need for a drink. After all, this is a 75-minute movie that feels like an eternity.
3/10 - DirectorH. Bruce HumberstoneStarsSidney TolerPhyllis BrooksVictor Sen YungWhile Charlie is distracted with the birth of his first grandchild, son Jimmy impersonates his father in order to investigate a murder aboard a freighter in the harbor.Warner Oland's unexpected disappearance from the set of "Charlie Chan at Ringside" and subsequent death threw doubt on the future of Charlie Chan. After 16 successful and beloved films in the series, 20th Century Fox had a major decision on their hands. Should they try to recast such an iconic role or should they allow the series to die with its leading man? Both choices had their pros and cons. The recasting seemed the more obvious choice to make, at first. Why let a cash cow die before every last penny has been drained from her? But would the audiences accept a new Charlie? Furthermore, would the audience accept a new Charlie without his number one son Lee? Keye Luke had become as much a staple of the series as Warner Oland was. Unfortunately, Luke had decided not to continue in the role without his on-screen father whom he had such warm chemistry with.
So, if 20th Century Fox decided to keep going with Charlie Chan it would have to be from a clean slate. Such a major decision was not to be taken lightly which explains the relatively long hiatus between "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" and "Charlie Chan in Honolulu". In between, the abandoned "Charlie Chan at Ringside" was retooled into the awkward "Mr Moto's Gamble" and Charlie got a new imitator in the form of Mr Wong who was played by Boris Karloff in a series of decently entertaining B-movies from Monogram Pictures.
The decision was finally reached and "Charlie Chan in Honolulu" finally reached the silver screen in December 1938 with a new star - Sidney Toler. Toler is the Charlie Chan I'm most familiar with. I grew up watching his films and have a certain fondness for their more fast-paced, gimmicky nature. Toler was a very different Chan than Warner Oland. He was more irascible, tougher, less polite and deferential. The debate about who was the better Charlie will probably rage for as long as the Chan films have fans. For me, I think they're both terrific in their own way. Oland was the warmer, wiser Chan for the cosy 1930s and Toler was the perfect tough, sharp cookie for the noirish 1940s.
But Sidney Toler is not entirely comfortable in the part here yet. He is clearly still defining his take on Charlie Chan and his characterization frequently flip-flops between his authentic attempts to make the character his own and a kind of Warner Oland imitation he is not particularly good at. The script is clearly written with Oland in mind and is full of his familiar quips ("contradiction, please"), his warm, gentle humour, and his politeness all of which would be remoulded if not entirely removed over the course of the next few films.
"Charlie Chan in Honolulu", however, is a careful movie. It does everything it can to ease the audience into the new, unfamiliar cast and to try to work even if Sidney Toler doesn't. A kind of lack of confidence in the new Charlie can be felt throughout. For one, he does not begin his investigation until the second third of the film!
The first 20 minutes are spent with his number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) who, like his brother before him, is desperate to be a detective. When he answers a phone call meant for his father, he decides to pretend to be the famous Chinese detective and take on a murder investigation on his own.
Victor Sen Yung's performance here is notably broader than Keye Luke's ever was. He is much more of an obvious comedic character - a cartoon almost. Sen Yung engages in plenty of face-pulling, running around, and comedic bits. Still, even though he is nowhere near as believable and engaging as Luke's Lee Chan was, I quite like Jimmy. He has that same endearing enthusiasm and actually proves to be a lot more useful in the investigation than you think he'll be.
The case revolves around a murder on a cargo ship docked in Honolulu and is a real thin, uninvolving mystery. The screenplay is written by Charles Belden, probably my least favourite Chan scribe whose scripts are always overloaded with grating, unfunny comedy and feature bland, forgettable mysteries. "Charlie Chan in Honolulu" is no exception.
The film spends far too much time trying very hard to be funny. Besides Victor Sen Yung and his bumbling antics, we also get a painfully cringeworthy comic relief character in the form of Al (Eddie Collins), a blundering sailor and his pet lion Oscar. I can't swear to it, but it feels like Collins gets more screen time than Toler here and his act is so broad, vaudevillian, and uniquely terrible that his very presence almost sinks the movie.
A running gag in the film involves Al and Jimmy running around the ship being terrified of everything from corpses to creaking doors. This "g-g-gosh" act gets tiring quickly and goes nowhere very, very slowly.
The film is only 67 minutes long but is such an unengaging and uninteresting affair that it feels a fair bit longer. Not only is the mystery completely bland but so are the suspects who are played by some of the stiffest actors in all of Chandom. The sole good performance comes from George Zucco who gives a very over-the-top but entertaining turn as the kooky Dr Cardigan who travels around with a human brain in a box kept alive by some Frankensteinesque instruments.
"Charlie Chan in Honolulu" is a distinctly middling Chan film thanks largely due to Charles Belden's typically weak and unfunny script. Thankfully, it's his last in the series. Less happily, it is also the last film directed by the always-reliable H. Bruce Humberstone. Humberstone's tight direction is one of the few genuinely good things about this film and it's sad to see him go on such a clunker. Also first-rate is Charles G. Clarke's shadowy, atmospheric cinematography. I wish it were put to use in a better, more mysterious film.
On a final positive note, I'd like to say that I quite enjoyed the scenes of Charlie with his large family. There is an endearing subplot involving Charlie becoming a grandfather for the first time and we get to spend more time with the Chan clan than we have since "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case". These funny, warm family scenes are far better than anything that happens on board the murder ship.
This is a shaky start to Sidney Toler's era but rest assured that things will get better. Like most pilots, things will only get better from here on in.
5/10 - DirectorNorman FosterStarsSidney TolerRicardo CortezPhyllis BrooksMary Whitman, an old friend of Charlie's in Reno for a divorce, finds herself accused of murdering the woman her husband planned to marry after the decree became final.Following a rather shaky start to his tenure as Charlie Chan, Sidney Toler's second film in the series "Charlie Chan in Reno" is far more confident and effective. It has the kind of verve and joy that made the Warner Oland films such a delight to watch but it also hints at a more dynamic, modern sensibility that would go on to mark the Toler era. After all, as one of the characters says to the woman whose husband she's planning to marry - "This is 1939 and we're modern!"
Sidney Toler is also clearly more comfortable as Charlie Chan, a role he is steadily making his own. The writing is swiftly catching up to his more stern, tough take on the character and the Chan we see here is miles away from Warner Oland's warmer, more deferential portrayal. In "Charlie Chan in Reno", the Chinese detective is a far more austere figure, especially in the face of stupidity. At times, Chan's remarks are openly sarcastic whereas Oland would always hide his acerbic wit under a veneer of politeness and confounding Confucian doubletalk. Here's one surprisingly frank moment of sarcasm: a goofy policeman remarks that he has spent so much at the crime scene that he could search it with his eyes closed. "Thank you," replies Chan, "This time then, I'll search it with my eyes open."
The biggest difference between "Charlie Chan in Honolulu" and "Charlie Chan in Reno" is how much better the latter is at integrating comedy with its thriller plot. In the worst Chan films, the comedy scenes tend to feel like they have been spliced in from a different film. Here, however, they are perfectly balanced so that the comedic characters make significant contributions to the ongoing plot while being funny in a way that doesn't jar with the overall tone of the film.
The comic relief is provided by Slim Summerville, one of the very best comics ever to appear in a Chan film. He plays Reno's comically grave sheriff "Tombstone" Fletcher. I like how Tombstone and Chan immediately get off on the wrong foot and never become friendly. Instead of bending over backwards trying to be a loveable second fiddle, Summerville gamely takes up the role of a buffoonish foe, engaging in some terrifically witty banter with Chan and opposing him at every turn. While some of his more physical gags are a bit too cartoonish, I felt that Summerville was a worthy addition to the film playing a character who contributed a lot to making "Charlie Chan in Reno" tonally dynamic rather than a one-note experience.
Also very good is Victor Sen Yung as Charlie's number two son Jimmy who is still as eager as ever to be a detective. The writers wisely write him in such a way that as goofy as he is he's actually of use to his father in the investigation. Not only does he do all of Charlie's legwork but his knowledge of chemistry supplies an invaluable clue to the identity of the murderer. That way, he's not mere comic relief.
The antics Jimmy gets involved in are also much, much better than the ones from "Charlie Chan in Honolulu". The way he is introduced in the film, after having been mugged of all of his clothes, is a comedic highpoint of the entire series. The whole sequence starting with a very peppy Jimmy driving down a Nevada highway and ending with him standing in a police line-up in his underwear is perfectly pitched and played by Victor Sen Yung. It's a real delight to watch!
The film was written by Frances Hyland, Albert Ray, and Robert E. Kent whose script has some terrific dialogue and a few colourful, entertaining characters. A stumbling block, however, comes from the film's mystery adapted from a story by Philip Wylie. Revolving around a murder of a serial adultress in a Reno hotel, it's just not all that interesting. The suspects are not clearly delineated, the motive is banal, and the setting of an upmarket hotel is neither exotic nor atmospheric enough.
Thankfully, Norman Foster's direction is absolutely superb. Best known for his work on the Mr Moto films, Foster delivers a slick, stylish, pacy film which merrily zips along through its lean 71-minute runtime. Even though most of the film is set in the rather drab-looking hotel, the few scenes set in other locations give Foster and his cinematographer Virgil Miller an excellent chance to show off. A brief but intriguing sequence set in a Wild West ghost town is as evocative and authentic as anything from the Moto films. I wish the whole film was set there.
It can be said that Sidney Toler's era of Charlie Chan films begins here! "Charlie Chan in Reno" is a confident, fast-paced, entertaining, witty film which heralds a new take on the old character. Even though the mystery is far from being the best in the series, the investigation is a whole lot of fun. I especially enjoy the rapport between Toler and Yung whose relationship is a whole lot more antagonistic than that of Oland and Luke but no less warm and amusing.
8/10 - DirectorNorman FosterStarsSidney TolerCesar RomeroPauline MooreCharlie's investigation of a phony psychic during the 1939 World Exposition on San Francisco's Treasure Island leads him to expose a suicide as murder.Despite its title "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island" does not see the famous Chinese detective battling pirates in order to find Captain Flint's buried gold. As enticing as that proposition may sound, the title is a baffling misdirection in a film full of sleights of hand. Instead, Charlie Chan once again takes on the supernatural which, this time, comes back with a vengeance.
In his previous encounters with superstition such as "The Black Camel" and "Charlie Chan's Secret", the truth behind the magic was quickly revealed leaving the audience in little doubt as to the existence of "other realms". However, in "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island", the possibility of the supernatural is dangled before us throughout the picture. Even after the clever, complex crime is revealed in the film's dazzlingly theatrical finale, the involvement of supernatural forces is still not entirely resolved.
The titular Treasure Island refers to a man-made island off the coast of San Francisco which is a minor location in this film (only a single scene takes place there). The story, instead, leads Charlie Chan all over the city from a police station to a psychic's mysterious house and finally to a theatre. But the film begins in the air as Charlie (Sidney Toler) and his number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) find one of their fellow passengers on board an aeroplane dead. The unfortunate fellow was a mystery writer named Paul Essex (Louis Jean Heydt) who died of unnatural causes clutching a note in his hand which reads: "Sign of Scorpio indicates disaster if Zodiac obligations ignored".
The note's ominous tone leads Charlie to the house of Dr Zodiac (Gerald Mohr), a theatrical psychic whose business practices were being investigated by the dead writer. In one of the film's best scenes, Zodiac gives a demonstration of his powers to Charlie. Set in a room surrounded by black drapes, the scene as shot by DP Virgil Miller has a real feeling of a stage show. As Zodiac's magic-simulating mechanisms whirl around Charlie, we get to see a master showman at work. It is a wonderfully entertaining and over-the-top scene which sets the tone for the rest of the film.
Another superb set-piece follows closely. Set on the titular island, Charlie attends another psychic demonstration this time by a young woman named Eve Cairo (Pauline Moore) who claims to be a mind-reader. During her show, the young woman suddenly becomes terrified, as she begins picking up powerful, hateful thoughts of someone in the audience. "I hear death among us," she shrieks, "There's evil here! Someone here is thinking murder!". This wonderfully atmospheric scene, suspensefully staged by director Norman Foster, is more than eerily reminiscent of Dario Argento's sizzling opening to "Deep Red".
It is a real testament to Foster how skillfully he glides between melodrama, farce, and genuine scares. Like every Charlie Chan film, there's plenty of comedy in "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island", most of it thanks to the overenthusiastic antics of Jimmy Chan, wannabe detective. But the comedy never undermines the spooky goings-on. Foster's command of tone and pacing is second to no other director in the Chan series. While even the best of the previous Chans occasionally struggled with mood whiplash, "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island" has no such problems. It is a seamless exercise in directorial dexterity.
The film also features a first-rate guest cast. Cesar Romero, one of the most charismatic and entertaining stars of the 1940s, gets a terrific role playing Dr Zodiac's rival, magician Rhadini. The final, extended set piece is set during a show-off between the oily Rhadini and the theatrical Zodiac. It is an absolute pleasure to watch Romero take command of the stage.
Also excellent are Pauline Moore as the haunted mind reader, June Gale as a jealous knife thrower, and Gerald Mohr as the sinister, melodramatic Dr Zodiac hidden behind a giant beard, theatrical make-up, and a vaguely oriental garb.
The film was written by John Larkin, a newcomer to the series, who spins a terrific mystery full of twists and misdirections. The story takes many elements which have been seen in Charlie Chan films before - phoney psychics, blackmail, a theatrical finale - and gives them a fresh coat by painting them in spooky, horror tones.
It is the execution, however, which makes this simply the finest Charlie Chan film so far. Especially Norman Foster's dynamic, pacey, and most importantly atmospheric direction. The film zips along through its lean 74-minute runtime providing more mystery and more chills than any Charlie Chan film so far. The story is solid, the cast is first-rate, and the film works on just about every level.
9.5/10 - DirectorHerbert I. LeedsStarsSidney TolerLynn BariRichard ClarkeWhile in Paris for a reunion on the eve of World War II, Charlie finds that the murder of a hated businessman leads him to a conspiracy to smuggle arms to Germany.Charlie Chan films depend so much on their settings. Whether it's the exotic desert camp in "Charlie Chan in Egypt", the spooky sewers of "Charlie Chan in Paris", or the gothic theatre from "Charlie Chan at the Opera", the location where the mystery is solved contributes to the film its atmosphere and its tone. Frequently as well the portrayal of the day-to-day activities and colourful characters who congregate there are far more interesting than the murder being solved. Such is the case with "Charlie Chan at the Circus" and "Charlie Chan at the Race Track".
Few Charlie Chan films have as evocative a setting as "City in Darkness". Set in 1938 at a time when, as the film's urgent newsreel prologue puts it, the crisis over Czechoslovakia threatens to plunge all of Europe into war, the film takes place in Paris during the first of the city's many blackouts. The threat of German aeroplanes bringing death and destruction looms heavily over the characters as they send their loved ones to a war that hasn't even started yet. Meanwhile, the alleys and sewers of Paris are enveloped in darkness as German spies plot behind the thick curtains meant to keep the light hidden.
What a fantastic setting for a thriller! Unfortunately, "City in Darkness" is nowhere near as good as its premise would suggest. It is not a terrible movie like "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" nor is it as uneven as "Charlie Chan in Honolulu" but it is a dreadfully dull picture which plods along through a routine, unengaging plot in as inoffensive and unexciting manner possible.
For one, the setting is barely used. The film, as many of the lesser Chans do, takes place primarily in drawing rooms and offices making nothing of the darkness promised in its excellent title. The nervous expectation of war is present and looms heavily over the characters but writers Robert Ellis and Helen Logan use it only for bombastic patriotism. Parents sending their children to war are proud and poetically inclined instead of being worried, sad, desperate... I did like the bittersweet note on which the film ends, however. If only the rest of the film had the same sense of uncertainty and anxiety.
But "City in Darkness" proceeds for the most part like one of those cheap Monogram films. It's heavy on dialogue and cringeworthy attempts at comedy and low on action and character development. Not much happens as Charlie (Sidney Toler) and his sidekick, the hapless French policeman Marcel (Harold Huber) trudge from one location to the next in pursuit of a murderer. The victim was a rich man named Petroff (Douglas Dumbrille) and he was found killed in his house which seemed to have been visited by an inordinate amount of people that night. Who is the killer? Honestly, who cares?
There's very little sense of danger in this picture. Most Chan films feature at least one other murder but the death of Petroff didn't seem to put a series of dangerous events in motion. Instead, all the suspects are hellbent on evading the police and potentially getting out of Paris alive. Maybe the Wehrmacht should have been the real villains of the film. Some German spies are present but very briefly and their schemes revolve around forged passports and ammunition boxes instead of killing anyone.
Most of the film then consists of dialogue scenes in which Charlie and Marcel question potential suspects in a surprisingly relaxed manner. These scenes are punctuated with unfunny bits of business in which the goofy French cop Marcel takes the place of Charlie Chan's number two son who is conspicuous by his absence. The usually reliable Harold Huber is dreadfully misused in "City of Darkness". Here he (over)plays a kind of Inspector Clouseau prototype complete with a propensity towards slapstick and a cod French accent (which his godfather, the chief of Parisienne police does not have!). Huber's over-the-top antics overpower the picture. Since the story is so thin and the characters so underwritten and uninteresting, his constant comedic interruptions become the film's only moments which stand out in any way. Unfortunately, he's not funny, merely annoying and the running gags (read: same punchline over and over again) become extremely tiresome almost immediately.
Other than its setting, there's nothing at all that is interesting or that works in "City in Darkness". It's a remarkably bland film, slow-moving and lacking both an interesting plot and memorable characters. When the killer was finally unmasked, I didn't care in the least.
When it comes to wartime Chans, "Charlie Chan at the Olympics" was a whole lot more entertaining and "Charlie Chan in Panama", which came next, was a whole lot more potent. "City in Darkness" is the flop of the lot despite its promising setting.
3.5/10 - DirectorNorman FosterStarsSidney TolerJean RogersLionel AtwillInspector Chan investigates a group of travelers, one of whom is a saboteur.In "Charlie Chan in Panama", the eponymous great Chinese detective (Sidney Toler) has given up detecting mysterious killers in swanky drawing rooms and joined the war effort. At the beginning of the film, we find him in Panama, "the city of spies", posing as a lowly hat salesman. His true mission, however, is to catch Reiner - an elusive and extremely crafty Nazi spy who has evaded capture for years and is now the greatest threat to the safety of the American Navy.
If you think this sounds like a plot of a Mr Moto film you're right. It does. "Charlie Chan in Panama", directed by Moto's favourite director Norman Foster, is the most Motoesque of all the Chans with its subterfuge, spies, secret passages, and concealed bombs. Intrigue has replaced mystery, action has supplanted interrogation, and the intelligent gentleman killer of yore has mutated into a gun-wielding sociopath ready to kill anyone at a moment's notice to protect their identity.
Charlie Chan is a little ill-at-ease in this action-packed spy yarn especially when he's accompanied by his klutzy number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung). Indeed, it is downright impossible to imagine the serene, analytical Warner Oland getting up to all the hijinks this script would require him to. Thankfully, Sidney Toler's Chan is a far more sprightly and brash figure and it's a little less jarring to see him hold a group of suspects at gunpoint.
Even though this dynamic, fast-paced actioner doesn't seamlessly fit into the Charlie Chan series, "Charlie Chan in Panama" is still a terrific thriller. As directed by Norman Foster it is slick, energetic, and possessed of an exoticness that characterised all of Foster's films. Even though the supposed exteriors of Panama are clearly flimsy sets, the film still suggests a peculiarly authentic atmosphere of its setting lulling you into the belief that you are really watching a story set in the sultry, dangerous land of Panama. This illusion is helped by Foster's keen eye for detail. Notice, for example, this terrific background gag: a door in a club bears a sign which reads "Hosteses Only - Keep Out". Underneath it, written in chalk, someone has added the words "and this means the Navy!"
The screenplay by John Larkin and Lester Ziffren is full of adventure and intrigue. Suspects keep falling like flies, guns are surreptitiously aimed at Charlie through ajar doors, and explosives are hidden behind hidden doors of Egyptian tombs. The film plods a bit in the middle due to a lack of notable set pieces which made "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island" such a fun experience but this is all made up for with a genuinely rousing climax. Set in a power plant, the finale is pure Hitchcock and sees Charlie Chan deliver his summation as a bomb ticks away in the background. It's terrific stuff!
The supporting cast is suitably colourful and includes a sinister Viennese doctor carrying around a cage full of rats marked "bubonic plague", a mysterious Czech parlour singer, and a sleazy Spanish club owner. Comic relief is provided by a blustering Panama chief of police (Chris-Pin Martin) and a wide-eyed schoolteacher on a trip around the world (Mary Nash). They get a bit too much with their over-the-top performances but ultimately they're a very small part of a movie that works like a well-oiled machine.
Speaking of comic relief, Jimmy Chan is back and I'm happy to have him. Victor Sen Yung's performance is very good indeed here and he's only helped by better-than-usual dialogue. There is some terrifically funny interplay between Charlie and Jimmy here. My favourite bit of dialogue comes after Charlie has rescued Jimmy from a Panama prison. Jimmy, enthused to be working on another case with his pop, says that Charlie will be "proud of him yet". "Hasten pride by removing odour of jail," replies Charlie with that biting cynicism that Toler did so well. To quote a Chanism - "Man without relatives is man without troubles".
Maybe Larkin and Ziffren's script would have been better suited for a Mr Moto adventure but "Charlie Chan in Panama" is a fun, slickly made, and engaging spy yarn. Norman Foster's characteristically dynamic direction, a colourful supporting cast, and a magnificent finale end up making it a most memorable Chan film.
8.5/10 - DirectorEugene FordeStarsSidney TolerMarjorie WeaverLionel AtwillCharlie tries to discover the identity of a strangler who strikes multiple times on a cruise ship bound from Honolulu to California.After the fairly unusual spy adventure that was "Charlie Chan in Panama", "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise" represents a pleasant if not necessarily welcome return to the formula which was more readily associated with Warner Oland's films than Sidney Toler's. There are no German spies, wartime plots, or supernatural forces at work in what amounts to a gently entertaining and old-fashioned murder mystery.
It seems that the desire to go back to the roots of the series was so strong that the makers of "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise" went back to the Earl Derr Biggers novels making this the first adaptation of one of the books since 1934's "Charlie Chan's Courage".
The book being adapted here is "Charlie Chan Carries On" which had previously been filmed as the very first of the Oland Chans. The story remains the same and sees Charlie (Sidney Toler) board a ship bound for San Francisco in order to arrest a dangerous strangler hiding in a group of tourists on a trip around the world.
Written by Robertson White and Lester Ziffren, "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise" is a much smarter adaptation of the Biggers novel in which Charlie doesn't even appear until two-thirds in. Here, he is involved right from the start after his old friend Inspector Duff (C. Montague Shaw) is killed by the strangler in Charlie's own office.
White and Ziffren further streamline the novel's story by confining the action to the ship. I regret the loss of all the exotic locations from the original novel and the 1931 film but then again the Chan films had become a much smaller affair since then. Instead, the ship setting offers a neat atmosphere of claustrophobia and tension. Truth be told, it isn't used nearly as much as it should be (the supposedly scared and anxious tourists still find the time to engage in a race on wooden horses) but the plot still retains some of the urgency of the original novel.
The supporting cast is comprised of a nicely colourful bunch of characters which is one of the better innovations of the Toler films. The Oland films often featured bland and faceless suspects and his adaptation of "Charlie Chan Carries On" was no exception (at least based on the surviving screenplay). I especially enjoyed the well-dosed comedic performances of Cora Witherspoon as a neurotic millionairess and James Burke as Wilkie, the house detective. The cast also includes a few welcome familiar faces such as Lionel Atwill and Leo G. Carroll.
Unfortunately, this finely constructed script landed in the hands of Eugene Ford, probably the worst of all the Fox Chan directors. Ford, who also helmed the abysmal "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo", was a bland and workmanlike director who fails to imbue the film with any atmosphere or style. His shots are bland and flat and his pacing nowhere near as dynamic as that imposed by Norman Foster in the best Toler films.
Still, even with these downsides, "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise" is a fun, cosy, and pleasantly old-fashioned Chan film which reminds us of the reasons why we love the series in the first place: its familiarity and its warmth.
7/10 - DirectorLynn ShoresStarsSidney TolerVictor Sen YungC. Henry GordonAn escaped convicted murderer hides out at a New York wax museum where he hopes to get plastic surgery, which will help him revenge himself on Charlie Chan.Charlie Chan cannot resist a challenge. In fact, if this film had been made in the early days of the Oland series, I'm sure it would have been called "Charlie Chan's Challenge".
The challenger is one Dr Otto von Brom (Michael Visaroff), a criminologist or as Jimmy Chan (Victor Sen Yung) puts it: "a detective who uses a microscope instead of common sense" (this wisecrack provokes one of Charlie's best lines in the whole series: "Allow parent to make Confucian sayings").
Anyway, back to the plot. Charlie believes that Dr von Brom's testimony sent an innocent man to the electric chair many years ago and is not shy about saying so. Dr von Brom is understandably upset about these claims and challenges him to a live radio debate.
What Charlie doesn't know, however, is that the radio debate is a trap! The broadcast is to be held in Dr Cream's Wax Museum of Crime which is actually a secret hideout for gangsters on the lam. One such gangster named Steve McBirney (Marc Lawrence) has escaped from prison and is recovering from plastic surgery there after which he plans to flee the country. Before leaving, however, he itches to get his revenge on the famous Chinese detective.
The radio broadcast begins on a dark and stormy evening. Everything is in place for McBirney's dastardly plot to unfold. The lights go out but once they turn back on it is Dr von Brom who is dead.
John Larkin's screenplay for "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum" is easily the most complex and intricate of the whole series. Not only is Charlie investigating the present-day murder of Dr von Brom but he's also tasked with finding the true killer in a cold case and with capturing an escaped convict.
Larkin populates the wax museum with all kinds of suspects all of whom have ulterior motives for being there. There's a beautiful young journalist out for a scoop (Marguerite Chapman), the museum's owner who is actually a plastic surgeon for the mob (C. Henry Gordon), a spaced-out woman in black who is actually the widow of the man Dr von Brom sent to his death (Hilda Vaughan) etc. etc.
Larkin keeps piling on various complications, mysterious visitors, farcical misunderstandings, and further murders stretching the lean 63-minute runtime to its limits. Sure, the climax, once it arrives, is something of a limp noodle after all the excitement that preceded it but the fact that the film even has a logical conclusion is a testament to Larkin's skills as a craftsman of mysteries.
"Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum" is the sole directorial credit in the series for Lynn Shores. What a shame! Perhaps Shores is not as technically adept as Chan's best directors H. Bruce Humberstone and Norman Foster but he gives them a run for their money on atmosphere alone. The setting of a spooky wax museum on a rainy night gives this film a horror movie feel and Shores has a lot of fun with the various macabre exhibits. He also makes some quite interesting shot compositions playing with depths of field and making sure that something is always going on in the backgrounds of shots. His collaboration with the director of photography Virgil Miller makes this film visually on par with "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island".
Unlike that film, however, the horror atmosphere here is neatly undercut by intrusions of high comedy. The film has a lot of moments of pure farce unseen in this quantity since "Charlie Chan at the Circus". The wax museum is full of nooks, crannies, and other hiding places which the film uses to great comedic effects. We get people hiding in sphinxes, an iron maiden being shut on an unsuspecting Jimmy Chan, a police inspector scaring everyone present by sneaking in through the window, and even two secret passages.
If that's not enough confusion, the wax museum also has a figure of Charlie Chan himself which Jimmy keeps mistaking for the real deal. Even though this gag is fairly obvious, it leads to some very well-executed laughs including what is probably the best ending of any of the Chan films. Victor Sen Yung shines in this one for sure.
Another actor who shines here is C. Henry Gordon, a veritable veteran of the Chan series in his last feature film role before an untimely death. His fifth appearance in the series is also his best as he finally gets a role large enough to show off. He's terrific as the skulking Dr Cream.
"Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum" is without a doubt a high point of the whole series. It's a funny, spooky, mysterious movie that is just about as much fun as a Charlie Chan film can be. The script is twisty and eventful, the direction stylish and atmospheric, and the supporting cast is clearly having a blast chewing up the excellent scenery.
9/10