The Black Camel

I must forewarn, one and all, I love murder mysteries. I am also a huge fan of the Earl der Biggers character, Charlie Chan. They are rather formulaic with their always being a young lovebirds involved in each case. The handsome young man in this one...was Robert Young's first starring role. The cast included Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye, apparently they had become a tagteam of sorts. Their movie Dracula had come out earlier that year. Bela played a famous mind reader that was in Hawaii on business. We meet Warner Oland, my personal favorite Charlie Chan, casing the mind reader, trying to disguise himself as a Chinese business man. Of course, Bela sees right through the charade and deduces that Charlie is really a policeman...Charlie warns Bela that they don't care for ripoff artists on the islands. Bela tells Charlie that they are both mystics...Chan investigates the past, while he investigates the future. The movie was full of plot twists and red herrings. The direction was crisp and the acting first rate. Though, in today's world of political correctness, the Asian stereotypes would be and are inappropriate...if one can overlook accepted bias' from eons ago...you can enjoy one of the first Charlie Chan's ever made. I believe Charlie Chan Carries On is the first episode of Charlie Chan, portrayed by Warner Oland...this is the second episode and one well worth your time to watch.

The 2nd real Charlie Chan film, the earliest to survive of the 38 that Warner Oland and then Sidney Toler churned out over the next 16 years for Fox and Monogram. Pretty faithful to Earl Derr Bigger's book, this only suffers mildly from the echoey staginess associated with early talkies, with some erratic acting but also some lovely smoky visuals of "Honolulu".

A woman with a dark past is stabbed to death at a hotel - of course all of the guests along with the butler and maid are involved for Charlie to sort through and mull over. Unravelling the threads of the mystery Charlie proved his eyes had microscopic capabilities (wonder how much DNA fingerprinting would've slowed him down?) - and that he was one of those "very clever men able to bite pie without breaking crust". There's a beautiful scene with the entire Chan Clan at the breakfast table that's worth a look on it's own. It all runs delightfully true to form, the excellent polished cast playing up well, especially young Robert Young and Bela Lugosi.

I can't speak for everyone else of course but I still cherish the hope films 1/3/4/5 will one day be found for the additional 5 hours pleasure.

I'd seen this film before on a private-edition videotape and have now watched it again on the version in the Fox Charlie Chan, vol. 3 DVD boxed set. This is one of the greatest films in the Charlie Chan series with Warner Oland — of the later films that exist only "Charlie Chan at the Opera" (ironically with another horror icon, Boris Karloff, in its cast) matches it — thanks to Hamilton MacFadden's dark, atmospheric direction; a script that sticks closely to Earl Derr Biggers' source novel (except for omitting the long prologue on the ship that takes the principal characters to Hawai'i); superb art direction by Ben Carré and a marvelous cast, including Bela Lugosi playing an unusual range of emotions for him (the scene in which he confronts Dorothy Revier early on is especially impressive and not at all what we think of as Lugosi's usual acting style); a welcome reunion between him and his "Dracula" cast-mate Dwight Frye; Robert Young looking like he just graduated from high school as the suitor of Shelah Fane's personal assistant (Sally Eilers); and excellent cinematography by Joseph August and Daniel Clark, more prestigious cameramen than usually worked on the Chan films. It's nice to see Chan's family used the way they were in the Biggers novels (Biggers frequently wrote scenes in which the Chans sit down to dinner and Charlie brings them — and us — up to speed on the latest developments in his case), and another welcome touch in this film is the artful use of "source" Hawai'ian music in lieu of orchestral underscoring. While it's likely the Hawai'ian location trip only involved a second unit shooting backgrounds (there are some pretty obvious process shots here) and the Hawai'ian music could have just as easily been recorded in L.A. (where there was a large community of Hawai'ian musicians at the time), nonetheless "The Black Camel" is vividly atmospheric. Why Hamilton MacFadden didn't have much of a directorial career after the mid-1930's — and none at all after 1945 — is a mystery; judging by this film he would have been a "natural" for the noir genre.

One of the very best of the early Charlie Chan films,'The Black Camel' features Warner Oland in his second outing as the Honolulu detective.With actual filming on Hawaiian locations(one of the few that did)the oriental sleuth tries to solve the murder of an unpleasant and very unpopular young actress,sifting through the usual baffling clues,and investigating one of the finest casts of suspects ever assembled for the series:Murray Kinnell,Victor Varconi,Robert Young,Richard Tucker and(fresh from their triumph in 'Dracula')Dwight Frye and Bela Lugosi!Viewers will also enjoy a look at Charlie's domestic life and huge family.In these earlier Chan films much of the basic plotlines followed the stories of Earl Derr Biggers' novels.

Hollywood star Shelah Fane is filming her latest movie in Honolulu, while keeping her name in the papers with her whirlwind romance to Alan Jaynes, traveling playboy. Shelah decides to send for her psychic consultant, Tarneverro, to advise her if marrying Jaynes is the right thing for her to do, but while consulting with him, Shelah hints of a murder she committed a few years earlier, one Denny Mayo. Later she is found dead by her friend Julie, and the case is turned over to Inspector Charlie Chan, who has to figure out the Denny Mayo connection to both Shelah and the murder suspect. Nice entry in the Chan series, helped immensely by the on location shooting in Hawaii. Even with Lugosi as Tarneverro (a suspect no doubt) the suspects do not really give any sinister or worth-a-closer-look performances here. Yamaoka is really annoying as Chan's bumbling assistant (the latter word used loosely) Kashimo. The main problem with the film is too many characters with their own story in a movie that can't quite crack the B movie mold. Later remade as Charlie Chan in Rio. Rating, based on B mysteries, 4.