THE BLACK CAMEL

US, 1931, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.
Warner Oland, Sally Eilers, Bela Lugosi, Dorothy Revier, Robert Young, Otto Yamaoka.
Directed by Hamilton Mac Fadden.

This is a second Charlie Chan film starring Warner Oland. The first film, Charlie Chan Carries on, is lost except for a Spanish-language version, with Hispanic cast, but using the original screenplay, which was filmed at the same time.

This film offers an interesting opportunity to see Warner Oland working with Bela Lugosi (Lugosi always seeming sinister with his accent but, while he plays someone who can foretell the future, is not a sinister character actor here, the film being made at the same time as his archetypal Dracula).

A Hollywood actress is filming in Honolulu but creates tantrums on set, clashes with her maid, becomes infatuated with a businessman, disrupting the filmmaking. She is killed. Which brings Charlie Chan into the action in his home area of Honolulu, a glimpse of one of his sons but not old enough to become Keye Luke, so active in later films – this time, an obsessive police assistant who behaves in exactly the same way, pursuing clues, coming up with suggestions…

There are plenty of suspects. However, the film also focuses on the assistant to the actress and her boyfriend, played by a very young and agreeable Robert Young. There is a complex story behind the murder, the actress having stolen the husband of another woman, then her abandoning him to marry the businessman. Her previous husband had been murdered and she has been present – which is why she wants to get advice from the man who could see the future.

It turns out that he grew up in Australia, is a brother of the husband, gets a confession from the actress about what happened – and her maid then turns out to be the initial jilted wife who does the murder.

And so, Charlie Chan is underway for the entertaining series of films throughout the 30s.