Eram Treze

This is a gem for film historians. Almost all the early Charlie Chan films are lost--the silent ones and even several sound ones. This is one of the earliest known Chan film, though it's a Spanish language version using the same sets yet an alternate cast. That's because in the early days of talkies, Hollywood studios often filmed several alternate language versions of the same film instead of dubbing the films or using captions. Most had entirely different casts that filmed at night when the American cast went home to bed. In a few odd cases, such as with Laurel and Hardy, the stars appeared in multiple versions of their films--learning lines phonetically in German, Spanish, Italian or French. As for the Chan films, this is the only one done in multiple versions and this is a blessing as the original version starring Warner Oland is lost.

In this case, Manuel Arbó stars as the intrepid detective. While Oland was a Swedish-American and didn't exactly look or act authentically Chinese, Arbó looked and sounded even less like a Chinese-American than Oland. Also, oddly, Chan doesn't even appear until about half way through the film--something that also apparently occurred in other earlier Chan films. Instead, a murder mystery is being competently investigated and Chan only enters the scene once the trail has gone completely cold.

While this is an odd entrance for Chan compared to the later style of the series and Manuel Arbó isn't the greatest Chan, the script is definitely a winner. In fact, it compares very well to the rest of the Fox series and is better than most. This really, really makes me hope that someday they'll unearth the Oland version ("Charlie Chan Carries On")--and fortunately, in recent years, many supposedly lost films have been uncovered.

By the way, this film was included as an extra in Volume 1 of the Charlie Chan collection which was released by Fox in 2006.

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.

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.

I just watched this film on DVD--it is in the new Charlie Chan box set on the disc with CC in Shanghai. It has English subtitles also. There is a scene where Charlie Chan is getting ready to board the boat to San Francisco. His wife and son are seeing him off at the dock. His wife speaks with to him in Japanese and at the end says "sayonara" to him (he answers in Spanish, of course. I guess back then they assumed that people would not know the difference between Japanese and Chinese!! By the way, another disc in the set, The Black Camel has a reading from the script of Charlie Chan's Chance, using still photos as a background. It is the complete script and since this is another lost Chan film, this might be the only was to see it

"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.