Eran trece

This Spanish version of the 1931 Charlie Chan film, "Charlie Chan Carries On" was fair to poor.....closer to poor because Charlie didn't show up in the film until it was over half over. I've never seen that in any of the English-speaking Chan films. He's always front-and-center.

This movie wasn't horrible but it was boring for several fairly-long stretches. It just isn't the same without Chan, and he's only in on screen in about 33 percent of the movie.

I had no trouble with Manuel Arbo's "take" on Chan. He's a little more subdued than Warner Oland or Sidney Toler but very comparable. His proverbs were fun and profound, as always. He was fine. The rest of the cast was so-so and a bit dated and silly with romance angles, gangster angles and an assortment of characters all of whom look guilty, of course.

As he did in some other episodes, Chan traps the murderer in the end with a clever scheme. The subtitles were easy to read but, as one reviewer said, this is more of a curiosity piece than anything else. It's for very, very hard-line Chan fans only. This was a bit boring even for me, and I love Charlie Chan films.

I've held out for a long time not seeing this in the hope that the original Warner Oland version would be unearthed somewhere … no such luck, as yet! So is this surviving simultaneous Spanish language version any good then? Well, it's OK in it's own right, a bit stagey but I still missed Oland in what would have been his first Chan effort. Films 3-5 also remain lost.

A man on a world tour with a group of shifty fellow travellers with fishy attitudes is murdered in a hotel room in London, and of course Scotland Yard hasn't got an answer to all of the clues presented. Two murders later and 41 minutes in we all get to Honolulu where Charlie Chan carries on where his British Inspector friend was forced to leave off. Manuel Arbo was passable as Charlie, with plenty of killer aphorisms up his sleeve – "Man not fool until he does something foolish" – but he appeared very melodramatic and I wearied a bit of his grimacing. The rest of the suspects, er cast were intense stereotypes – unwary people might wonder at the simplicity of it all, but isn't everybody and everything on the planet a stereotype? It followed the usual rules, so if you know your Charlie Chan format you can whittle the suspects down to a final two or three, or one if you're lucky. Charlie, as he did many times later cheated by applying subterfuge over deductive reasoning in his unmasking of the dastard but I could see that coming as well.

Overall well worth it to a Chan completist, OK for Golden Age aficionados, so I enjoyed it on both levels but I did warn you if you hate either genre.

1931's "Eran Trece" (There Were Thirteen) still exists as the only foreign language version of a Charlie Chan feature, in this case Warner Oland's debut "Charlie Chan Carries On," one of four sadly lost titles among his first five (he completed 16 by the time of his 1938 death). All five of these early entries were adapted from recent publications by original Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers, Fox beginning their run of globetrotting originals in 1934 with "Charlie Chan in London," continuing all the way up until the 1942 release of "Castle in the Desert," the 11th outing for Oland's capable replacement, Sidney Toler. The problem with the Spanish "Eran Trece" is not just the absence of Warner Oland, Manuel Arbo cast as the Chinese detective living with his growing family on Punchbowl Hill, but its slavish adherence to the Biggers novel "Charlie Chan Carries On," the character kept off screen for the entire first half as a rather lazy investigation is conducted by Scotland Yard's Inspector Duff (Rafael Calvo). Murder strikes a London hotel during a world cruise organized by Dr. Lofton (Julio Villarreal), all the suspects allowed to continue to their final destination in San Francisco due to lack of evidence or even motive, though it later becomes clear that the killer is using a phony name to infiltrate the party to avenge himself on a wife who ran off with another man, both now marked for death. The largely unknown Spanish cast ensures that tedium results from so many interchangeable characters cluttering up a nonexistent storyline, which would have benefitted greatly with their English speaking counterparts, in particular Warren Hymer and Marjorie White as the comic relief Chicago couple. Only when a stopover in Honolulu finally introduces Chan is there a reprieve, Arbo at least a physical match for Oland, yet he is given little to do but wander from one place to another as the ship moves on to California, his only recourse to set a trap for the culprit because of the absolute lack of clues available (the 1929 "Behind That Curtain" would have fared even worse, as the studio practically wrote Chan out of the story until the very end). Manuel Arbo may not be an ideal replacement for Warner Oland, but he enjoyed a lengthy career with over 200 credits in Mexico, working right up to his 1973 death. While "Charlie Chan Carries On" remains a lost film, one can happily indulge in its 1940 remake, "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise," this time keeping Sidney Toler's Chan front and center while eliminating Inspector Duff in the opening reel, and including not one but two Chan sons for company, Lionel Atwill as the cruise director.

"Eran Trece" has obvious novelty value - a Charlie Chan movie entirely in Spanish! - but beyond that, it's a pretty good little mystery on its own; it certainly looks good and moves well for a 1931 production. However, it goes on too long (for example, the entire "impressions at the party" sequence could have been cut), and - as in many later Chan pictures - the killer seems to be picked out of a lottery; there are no particular clues to indicate that it has to be person A instead of person B or person C. **1/2 out of 4.

One of the few Chan movies to actually be based on one of the original novels this is essentially the start of the series of movies that many people know and love so well. The story was later shortened and reused as Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise. This was shot at the same time as an alternate Spanish version of the now lost Charlie Chan Carries On, and is an excellent take on the great detective.

The plot begins in London where a friend of Chan's, an Inspector Duff, is called in to investigate the murder of one of a travel group touring the world. It transpires that one of the group is not who they say they are and is out for revenge of a past wrong. Two more murders follow as the group continues the tour, but still there is no sign of the killer. When events in China put another member of the party in danger, Duff is forced to act and he races to Hawaii to see his old friend Charlie Chan to ask his help with the case before the party leaves. While visiting Chan in his office Duff is shot down. Chan feeling an obligation to his fallen friend tells the medics who rush Duff to the hospital to tell his friend that "Charlie Chan carries on". Chan joins the party as they board a ship for San Fransisco, vowing to either solve the murder by the time they arrive or retire if he hasn't. (The appearance of Chan is half way into the movie, and its the point at which Murder Cruise begins).

This is a really good little movie and its understandable why a series sprang from it. Even though Chan doesn't show up for a good while into the proceeding, he hangs over the film since Duff is constantly quoting things that his friend Chan might say. The mystery is tightly plotted and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Its so well done that I didn't mind not seeing Chan in action and found myself actually wishing for a series of films with Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard.

Manuel Arbó is a great Chan. A very physical actor he moves and does things that Warner Oland , and the other actor's playing Chan rarely did, he got on his knees to detect, rifles through drawers and actually does hands on investigating. Chan is also a very clearly two men. Outwardly he is the quiet font of Chinese wisdom that most people feel they can under estimate. Inwardly and when he is in the hunt he is a man of action who knows what has to be done and how to do it. Watch how he searches a room, or in the final reel sets the trap for the killer. He moves in a way that none of the other Chans ever did. He is not just a man of words, but a man of action who is very clearly in control of what is going on. Arbo is made to look physically like Oland, no doubt to use shots from the other version, however there is something more commanding about his presence. You are very aware of his presence in a scene, even when he is on the out skirts of it. I would love to have seen how the series would have played out had Arbo been allowed to play the detective. (Perhaps what makes this film so great is that it doesn't follow the the pattern of the series).

This is a movie to search out. If you can find it somewhere by all means do see it. There is an English subtitled version floating around if you don't speak Spanish (This may carry the English translation of the title They Were Thirteen). Even if you are not a Charlie Chan fan this is just a really good mystery. This is the sort of thing that people don't make any more, it feels like a movie you'll want to curl up with on a dark a stormy night.