The Black Camel (1931)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Hamilton MacFadden

Writers:

Earl Derr Biggers (novel)
Barry Conners (writer)

Release Date:

21 June 1931 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

CHARLIE CHAN'S Latest Thriller

Plot:

The 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.

Plot Keywords:

Honolulu | Murder | Psychic | Charlie Chan | Movie Star

Cast

Warner Oland	...	Charlie Chan
Sally Eilers	...	Julie O'Neil
Bela Lugosi	...	Tarneverro
Dorothy Revier	...	Shelah Fane
Victor Varconi	...	Robert Fyfe
Murray Kinnell	...	Smith
William Post Jr.	...	Alan Jaynes
Robert Young	...	Jimmy
Violet Dunn	...	Anna the maid
J.M. Kerrigan	...	MacMaster
Mary Gordon	...	Mrs. MacMaster
Rita Rozelle	...	Luana
Otto Yamaoka	...	Kashimo

Runtime:

71 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono | Mono (Western Electric System)

Filming Locations:

Honolulu, O'ahu, Hawaii, USA

Company:

Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Of the five Warner Oland Charlie Chan films based on the original Earl Derr Biggers novels, only this one still survives. The other four are believed to have been lost in one of two fires, one in the thirties and the other in the sixties.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Charlie is inspecting underneath the table, the motion of the light spot on the floor does not correspond to the position of Charlie's flashlight.

Quotes:

Charlie Chan: You quench fire of my curiosity with handful of *straw*!

Movie Connections:

Followed by Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)

Great movie, and a welcome rediscovery

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.