Charlie Chan Collection - Volume 1 (Charlie Chan in London / Charlie Chan in Paris / Charlie Chan in Egypt / Charlie Chan in Shanghai / Eran Trece)

Confucius Meets Sherlock HolmesOne of the cultural icons of the 1930s, in print and on screen, was Charlie Chan. As is well known, Chan's creator, Earl Derr Biggers, based the figure upon a real Hawaiian detective,Chang Apana. But underneath the disguise we have no difficulty in detecting the features of Sherlock Holmes. At a moment when Asian characters frequently appeared in Western novels or stage plays as kowtowing houseboys or opium smoking fiends, Biggers showed real audacity in coming up with his sleuth.But he was tapping into another stereotype, that of China as a land of ancient wisdom populated by oracular mandarins, from whose golden tongues aphorisms from Confucius or Lao Tzu flew like plum blossoms in the spring wind. Charlie Chan is Sherlock Holmes as an Eastern sage. Chan is a man of impeccable dignity and aplomb, who has no bottles hidden in his desk drawers and no blondes lurking in his closet, and who solves crimes by superior skull skills, in the words of Churchy La Femme.There had been a couple of attempts at transferring Chan to celluloid in the 1920s, but the series really geared up when Fox cast Warner Oland in the role in 1931. Oland, who had previously played Jackie Robin's father in The Jazz Singer and the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in some early sound pictures at Paramount, was no great actor, but he made the role of Chan incontestably his own. It is just as impossible for anyone who has ever seen Oland as Chan to imagine another actor in the role as it is to imagine anyone other than Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes.A number of the Oland-Chan pictures have been previously available in VHS format, but this DVD set is an absolute treat, indispensable for Chan fans and for devotees of studio filmmaking in the heyday of Hollywood. The set consists of four pictures starring Oland made from 1934-35, along with Eran Trece (They Were Thirteen), the 1931 Spanish language version of the no longer extant Charlie Chan Carries On. In addition, there are three quite informative and well-made short documentaries dealing with the origin of the Chan figure and its development, the production of the films, etc.One mystery that might have baffled Chan himself is the omission of The Black Camel (1931) from the set. Photographed partly on location at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and its environs, the movie boasts a cast that includes Bela Lugosi, Robert Young--in his first screen appearance--and Dwight Frye, albeit uncredited. I appreciate the inclusion of EranTrece, but it is mainly a curiosity, and inferior to The Black Camel. Fortunately, the latter film is not lost, and converts to the Chan cult can obtain an acceptable DVD copy of it from Sinister Cinema, which they will want to add to their collections.All of the pictures in the set are quite entertaining if conventional thrillers set in foreign locales, Eran Trece being the weakest of the lot, mainly owing to Oland's absence. Eran Trece uses a global cruise as background for a murder mystery, while Charlie Chan in London--with a very young Ray Milland--recounts Chan's efforts to free an innocent man facing execution. In Charlie Chan in Paris, the detective visits the City of Lights to clear up a bank fraud, and supplies one of the series' more memorable lines, when he says to a companion, "Many strange crimes committed in the sewers of Paris," while gazing into some impenetrably murky subterranean waters.Charlie Chan in Egypt centers upon the theft of relics from an Egyptian tomb, and Charlie Chan in Shanghai shows Chan breaking up a ring of opium dealers. Although these are all B productions, usually lacking well-known performers apart from Oland, Fox was a major studio, and the cinematography--honor to your memory, Joseph August, Ernest Palmer, Daniel Clark, and Barney McGill!--and set design are generally outstanding. The opening of the tomb at the beginning of Charlie Chan in Egypt, to cite one example, utterly puts to shame a comparable scene in The Mummy, when archaeologists unearth the tomb of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon.Serious critics at the time would have dismissed the Chan movies as escapism; present day partisans of political correctness would have far harsher things to say. More than anything else, they are relics of a pre-World War II, pre-Cold War America that viewed the outside world with suspicion, if not necessarily hostility. They are not racist but outdated, so outdated that they have acquired the etiolated charm of a once stylish table lamp found moldering in the shadows of an antique store. To use a felicitous phrase of James Joyce's from Finnegan's Wake, they are "Only the fadograph of a yestern scene,"Most importantly, one of the motives that first brought paying customers into movie theaters burns brightly in all of these films: to transport viewers to hitherto unrevealed lands of excitement and mystery. In the old days, the dimming of the house lights and the opening of the curtains was always the promise of a revelation. For this reason, my favorite of the set is Charlie Chan in Egypt which plunged me into an Egypt of the 1930s hardly less fabulous than that of the pharaohs, mesmerized me with its luminous procession of black and white images, and entrapped me in a silver nitrate labyrinth cleverly fabricated by the Fox studio. On the veranda, I sipped a gin and tonic, while an overpowering odor of ancient incense filled my nostrils. Could it be the same incense Ardath Bey burns for Helen Grosvenor in The Mummy?

Loosely basing the character the legendary police officer Chang Apana (1887-1933), author Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933) wrote the first Charlie Chan novel in 1925. His novels, six in all, were immensely popular--and Hollywood soon bought the rights. At least two silent films, which do not survive made; a third film, BEYOND THAT CURTAIN, reduced the character of Chan to a minor role. In 1931, however, Fox studios hit the right mixture of mystery and comedy with CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON, and the result was an immensely popular series of forty-five films made over the course of two decades. These films were staples of afternoon and late night television well into the 1970s, but as time passed pressure groups that considered them politically incorrect forced them from public view.Even so, the Chan films commanded a large cult following, and the films gradually became widely available in various bootleg editions--so popular, in fact, that 20th Century Fox eventually saw the commercial possibilities. THE CHARLIE CHAN COLLECTION VOLUME 1 is the result, and although it can be faulted in several ways, it is pretty much what Chan fans have dreamed of for the past decade.The single greatest fault of the collection is its failure to include THE BLACK CAMEL, the earliest surviving Chan film to star Warner Oland, and one of the few Chan films directly based on an Earl Derr Biggers novel. Although the films have been digitally remastered, and they are easily the best prints to come along in many, many years, the remaster is not "full;" it merely smooths away the worst of the scratches and artifacts. And although the bonuses included are excellent, they are very scant.Even so, this is Charlie Chan, and he hasn't looked this good in close to five decades. All four films star Warner Oland--and some viewers may be surprised to find that Chan films were a breeding ground for talent, for a number of future stars cut their teeth in Chan films. IN LONDON (1934) finds Chan investigating a murder among the horsey set--and co-stars a very young Ray Milland. IN PARIS (1935; long thought to be a lost film in the series) concerns a bank scandal--and introduces Keye Luke as Chan's "Number One Son." IN EGYPT (1935) finds Chan investing a series of murders amidst archeological digs--and features both a very young Rita Hayworth and the notorious Stepin Fetchit. IN SHANGHAI (1935) finds Chan doing battle with smugglers--and returns Keye Luke to the mix. The scripts are witty, the plots are flyweight but entertaining, and the casts always give a good performance.Critics of the series complain that white actors played Chinese in "yellowface" make-up; that Chan speaks in pidgen English; that he is a stereotypical "stupid Chinaman" and that he is the butt of racial jokes. These complaints, however, really have little basis in the films themselves. Although he was European, Warner Oland had an Asian heritage and used very little make up for the role--and all supporting Asian characters were played by Asian actors, with Keye Luke a case in point. Chan does not speak pidgen English; in both novels and films he speaks English as a second language and, quite naturally occasionally struggles with it. Although he occasionally adopts the poise of a "stupid Chinaman," he does so to mislead the suspects around him, and when a character repeatedly makes Chan the butt of racial jokes you can be pretty sure he will turn out to be the killer.Hollywood films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s had a very clear tendency to adopt a "Fu Manchu" mentality: although there was an occasionally sympathetic portrayal, most Chinese characters were either servile or evil. Chan, however, interacts with the "white world" as an equal--and outsmarts them at the end. As such, the films were remarkably advanced for their time and were in fact immensely popular with Asian-American audiences of the day.All of this said, it is quite true that Charlie Chan films are very innocent in their outlook--but it is this innocence that gives them their charm. Love them or hate them, they are period peices that reflect the niave failings of their day, but which do so without malice and often with considerably appeal. In addition to a trailer for CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON and three short but interesting "featurettes," the set includes ERAN TRECE, the Hollywood-produced Spanish language version of the lost 1931 Charlie Chan Carries On, available here in a reasonable print for the first time. Recommended for Chan fans everywhere.GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Charlie Chan ist kaum zu toppen. Die Collection enthält 4 Filme des genialen Detektivs, darunter die Episode in Paris, von der sich die Experten streiten, ob sie jemals in deutscher Sprache synchronisiert wurde. Hier liegt sie auf jeden Fall in englischer Sprache mit deutschem Untertitel vor.Dies tut dem Spaß aber keinen Abbruch, zumal diese Folge durch das Auftauchen von Sohn Nr. 1 wegweisend ist. Warner Oland ist in der Rolle seines Lebens einfach grandios auch wenn der später durch ein Casting zu der Rolle gekommene Sidney Toler seine Sache nicht schlecht gemacht hat.Die 4 Filme stecken jeweils in einem eigenen Case, die wiederum befinden sich in einem Pappschuber. Das alte Thema mit dem FSK-Logo: Ja, der Aufkleber ließ sich entfernen, was aber diesmal sehr schwierig war.Danke an Kochmedia für die Veröffentlichung, so konnte ich mein Repertoire an Sinnsprüchen schön erweitern, die ich jetzt regelmäßig im privaten Bereich anwende.

Charlie Chan Vol. 1 is more enjoyable than a large helping of Moo-Shoo Pork! If you have a love for old movies and mysteries, that don't take themselves too seriously, this is the set for you. I've watched them before in their various VHS releases but I must comment on the terrific restoration efforts by Fox. These movies are now clear and more fun to watch than ever before. Warner Oland is wonderful as the "old Chinese detective". Keye Luke appears in three of the four movies as No. 1 son, Lee Chan. The movies themselves are everything you could ask of 30's detective stories. I am sooooo glad that Fox has chosen to release them without changing anything to suit modern tastes. These movies are a product of their era and if anything were edited or changed they would lose their appeal. There are interesting (if limited) special featurettes on all of the discs, including the only remaining version (in spanish) of the first Charlie Chan talkie. It is subtitled in english and fun to watch. I HIGHLY recommend this set to any fan of the 30's detective genre.

all ok.ok.ok .ok.ok .ok.o .ok. ok.ok .ok.ok .o.ook. ok ok oo,am trying to go out and cant till nfilled these

This was a Christmas gift for my wife discs were scratched not happy at all

I had only seen a couple of these films as a kid and remember enjoying them. As an adult it is clear they are "B" movies but that does not take away from their appeal. Charlie Chan is played in a very engaging way. It makes you feel like he could be a good friend of yours almost from the first minute you see him. The number one son role, played by Keye Luke, is entertaining as he uses vernacular American lingo in sharp contrast to Mr. Chan's staid and measured language. The plots are OK and intricate enough that you wonder how they will be solved. The supporting actors are mostly good, some of whom go on to be stars afterward with notables such as Rita Hayworth. I would compare these films in mood and character to the excellent Columbo TV series. Very cozy films to watch, almost as good as reading a good book by the fire.