Charlie Chan Collection 3 [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I'm not saying that I'm obsessed with Charlie Chan however I do have a copy that I got from eBay when Charlie Chan was not politically correct, a copy off of the television, a copy from England when they were not available in the United States, and now I am collecting the copies that are coming out available in the United States.

This box set contains:
"Charlie Chan's Secret" (1936) B/W 72 minutes
"Charlie Chan on Broadway" (1937) B/W 68 minutes
"Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo" (1937) B/W 72 minutes
"The Black Camel" (1931) B/W 71 Minutes

Some people nowadays are complacent and expect DVD features or extras. I personally just wanted a copy of Charlie Chan they would not fade away as it does on tape. I thought I was duplicating some of the individual movies that I already own. However it turns out I should have paid more attention to the features. It a delightful surprise to find that these have been digitally restored with HD in mind, and are a lot easier to watch. You notice details that you didn't notice before.

Of course restoration is not the only advantage of this box set. There are several featuretts, still photos, and other goodies. One feature that I was not too thrilled with was the commentary by film critic Ken Hanke and the film historian John Cork; they appear more to be trying to get "one up" on each other and don't appear to have a very in-depth history of film as they were describing the set of the Castle in Charlie Chan's secret and completely missed a lot of the points that you would've caught if you had watched old UFA films such as "The Cabinet of Caligari."

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What is Charlie Chan's Secret?

This film starts out with that familiar 30s mystery sounding music. Then we immediately cut into a diving scene where they used underwater type music. Here Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) is on a boat searching for the missing body of Allen Colby. Allen is the long missing heir to the family fortune and was on his way back to clean it when he met with an accident. Or was it an accident?

Even though the Ouija board said that Allen was dead, we make one last attempt to contact him through a séance. Will Allen show? If so can he point out his killer?

Only Charlie Chan with his unique perspective can make heads or tails of what the secret is all about. Even Charlie has to learn throughout the movie and we learn with him.

This is one of Warner Oland's best. We get a lesson in radio, and quinine that evidently was used at one time for colds.

So let's sit back and enjoy a spooky spirit house, a handful of spooky people, and a shot in the dark.

The third in Fox's not-quite-chronological collection of restored Charlie Chan films actually offes five - or more accurately, five-and-a-half - films from the series' glory years.

The only surviving Warner Oland film based directly on one of Earl derr Biggers' novels, The Black Camel isn't one of Charlie Chan's better cases. Oland's second Chan film offers a promising mystery loosely inspired by the murder of director William Desmond Taylor and a cast of colourful characters - movie stars, publicists, Bela Lugosi's Hollywood psychic, Murray Kinnell's beach bum painter and an unbilled Dwight Frye's butler (Renfield and Dracula together again!) - but the end result is still a bit awkward. A good joke about lie detectors notwithstanding, the aphorisms feel forced ("There is old saying, 'Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate.' Tonight black camel knelt here"), Oland's performance seems impatient and rushed and while Fox may have shot on location in Hawaii, much of the film comes down to confrontations in drawing rooms. There's no Number One or Number Two Son this time round, but there is an unfortunately idiotic comic relief Japanese sidekick that seems to indicate the studio hadn't quite made it's mind up about whether they wanted to go with the inscrutable or the asinine Oriental stereotypes and decided to have their cake and eat it. Robert Young makes his screen debut while Hamilton MacFadden not only directs but plays a film director in the film as well.

Along with an audio commentary by Ken Hanke and John Cork and a stills gallery, the extras also offer a reconstruction of one of the missing Chan films, Charlie Chan's Chance, with actors reading the script over an extensive collection of stills from the film. It's a shame this is still missing, because it's a decent one, though the presentation works surprisingly well, the dialogue-heavy script giving it the feel of an old-time radio show.

"Hasty conclusion like ancient egg - look good from outside."

1936's Charlie Chan's Secret is one of the best of Warner Oland's Chan movies, seeing the Honolulu detective hired to track down a missing heir who turns up dead at a séance. Naturally everyone present has a motive, from the relatives who'll have to account for how they've been spending his money in his absence to the caretaker whose daughter committed suicide when he jilted her. Well, almost everyone since it's pretty obvious that the butler at least didn't do it since he's played by the ever dashing and courageous Herbert Mundin, who's a joy to watch here. He's not the only one who's in good form either, with Oland, for once going it alone without the family, giving one of his best turns in the series with a rather more subtle and naturalistic performance than later efforts: his underplayed shocked reaction to a brush with death is certainly not as cavalier here as in other entries. The plot developments and identity of the killer may not exactly be surprising but it's all executed so well that it never really matters, with the film's lean 72-minute running time ensuring it never has time to lose the attention. You can also spot Rosina Lawrence, Stan and Ollie's leading lady in Way Out West, in the supporting cast while the atmospheric cinematography is by future director Rudolph Mate (D.O.A., When Worlds Collide).

Although Fox's DVD is preceded by `best available materials' warning, the picture quality is for the most part excellent and there are only minor issues with the soundtrack. Decent extras include an audio commentary by Ken Hanke and John Cork, featurettes on Chan's role in the rise of modern detective fiction and on Taiwanese-American forensic expert Dr Henry Lee and a stills gallery.

"Have the band blast at somethin' Oriental. Hey, what is the Chinese national anthem anyway?"
"I don' know. Why don't you give 'em 'Chinatown, My Chinatown?'"

Charlie Chan on Broadway is a slick number that sees Charlie arriving in New York on the same ship as a woman whose diary can put half the mobsters, politicians and crooked cops in the Big Apple behind bars. When she naturally turns up dead in nightclub owner Douglas Fowley's office, the diary goes missing and Number One Son is among the suspects, it's a foregone conclusion that the honorable detective will solve the case. Luckily it was candid camera night at the club, so there's plenty of photographic evidence to play with, and a wide cast of New York stereotypes to play with, from Harold Huber's brash cop, J. Edward Bromberg's creepy editor among the suspects, Leon Ames' upmarket gangster, Marc Lawrence's shifty ex-husband and the bickering duo of Donald Woods' ace reporter and Joan Marsh's fast-talking hotshot photographer ("I want to shoot you before somebody else does!"). It's a pleasingly pacey and punchy little number, director Eugene Ford keeps it moving along nicely and the killer's identity is a genuine surprise in this one.

It's a bit easier to see the problems Fox faced restoring this one: while it's a clear, sharp transfer the evidence of serious water damage on the source print is there if you look for it in the form of some fluctuation in places, but for once DNR has been applied sensibly and sensitively to try to restore the image rather than wax it over. A decent extras package includes a half-hour featurette on Chan's worldwide travels (without ever leaving the Fox backlot), a shorter appreciation of Chan's aphorisms and a stills gallery.

"Perhaps now we catch lion in mousetrap. Or lioness."

Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo would turn out to be Warner Oland's swansong in the role, and while it's not a particularly good entry in the series it's a decent enough time filler that benefits from high production values and the kind of polished production that hides some of the story's lack of inspiration. This time round Charlie and his Number One Son get mixed up in a murder and the theft of a million dollars in bonds while stopping off in the principality en route to Paris, uncovering the usual suspects - women living beyond their means, speculators, blackmailers and gamblers - in a case that never seems to matter quite as much as it should. The standout performance this time round comes from Harold Huber, taking time out from playing the brash New York detective and going for a change of pace as the courteous and obliging head of the Monaco police force complete with a surprisingly convincing French accent. It's not a series highlight but it's not a bad way for Oland to bow out.

Extras include a couple of stills galleries and a featurette on Oland (who knew he and his wife made their money translating Strindberg's plays?) which includes footage of Oland in Shanghai, but it's disappointingly light on details about the aborted production of Charlie Chan at the Ringside and his subsequent unexpected death that's covered in much more detail in a much better featurette on Mr Moto's Gamble. However, the most intriguing extra is the first Fox Charlie Chan film...

It's not altogether surprising that Fox have hidden away the studio's first Charlie Chan film, 1929's Behind that Curtain, as an extra on the B-side of their DVD of Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo - it's a film of more historical interest than entertainment value. A stilted early talkie, it's not even a Charlie Chan movie as such, more a movie with Charlie Chan in it very briefly at the end (played here by Korean actor E.L. Park). Instead the lead sleuthing duties go the wooden Gilbert Emery as Sir Frederick Bruce of Scotland Yard (as he helpfully reminds people). Aside from, uh, his very, uh, slow and, uh, affected, uh, manner of speech, you've, uh, never seen an actor quite so obsessed with playing with props: slippers, pipes, cigarettes, globes, nothing is safe when he's around - at one point he even stops to tie up his shoes mid-sentence to distract the audience's attention from the other actor in the scene. It's as if he's unable to speak unless he's stroking something. Even Peter Cushing at his busiest has nothing on Emery here when it comes to prop fondling. But even Emery can't compete with the truly surreal moment where Philip Strange's caddish errant husband looks at the camera for 15 seconds with an expression caught somewhere between lechery and incontinence before following after a sluttish serving girl. It's even more bizarre than the twitch he develops in his last scene.

For the most part it's a chamber piece played by forgotten and forgettable actors (though Boris Karloff, who would later get co-starring above-the-title billing in Charlie Chan at the Opera, appears as an Indian servant). Most of the cast are playing for enunciation rather than emotional truth, leaving Warner Baxter the most convincing screen presence as the explorer and jilted suitor who may be the fall guy for the murderer of a lawyer who had incriminating documents on him, among others - or may be the guilty party. He's not even particularly good, but in this company he really doesn't have to be. Not that any of them are helped out by the clumsily melodramatic direlogue of the "I love you, I love you, I love you" variety they have to deliver or the unconvincing script that replaces the novel's trio of detectives competing to solve a mystery with a standard drawing room romantic triangle. The whodunit angle is dispensed with a third into the picture, leaving the villain's wife's mystifying reluctance to divorce him for fear of the scandal to provide what passes for suspense as it drags its heels through a series of overlong conversations in country houses in England, tents in Persia and elevators and lecture halls in San Francisco. Read more ›