DVD Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 (Charlie Chan at the Circus / Charlie Chan at the Olympics / Charlie Chan at the Opera / Charlie Chan at the Race Track):
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Editor: 20th Century Fox
Category: Feature Film-drama - Gift Set - Movie - Mystery / Suspense / Thriller - Silent Movie
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DVD Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 (Charlie Chan at the Circus / Charlie Chan at the Olympics / Charlie Chan at the Opera / Charlie Chan at the Race Track)
Review(s): DVD Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 (Charlie Chan at the Circus / Charlie Chan at the Olympics / Charlie Chan at the Opera / Charlie Chan at the Race Track)
GREEDY FOX STRIKES AGAIN!
I love the Chan movies, but Fox is doing it again! They released only 4 movies in Vol. 1 and now 4 movies in Vol. 2. Since each Chan movie is no longer than 80 minutes, they could easily put 2 movies on each disc or even on each side of a disc. Fox feels the need to get every penny out of the public that they can. SHAME ON YOU, FOX!
The Charlie Chan Series At Its Peak!
Volume 2 in Fox's Charlie Chan DVD Collection seems not to have been released as much as it escaped. Volume 1 was widely heralded but this installment, which contains the best of the films when the series reached its peak, sort of snuck up on us. Frankly, I can't believe I'm the first one here to review it.
Full disclosure: I own Volume 1 and just purchased Volume 2 through Amazon. So my review at this point is based on my (repeated) TV viewings dating back to the mid 1960s through just a few years ago before the Fox Movie Channel banned the CC films. I noticed that Fox skipped one film in this set, CHARLIE CHAN'S SECRET (1936) that preceeded the four films in Volume 2. Why? I can only guess except that SECRET is a real letdown compared to the quality of the films before it - CHARLIE CHAN IN... LONDON, PARIS, EGYPT, and SHANGHAI. And the films that followed that are represented in Volume 2. But still why was it dropped? I guess that's Fox's secret.
As with Volume 1, Warner Oland simply IS Charlie Chan. Oland continues to play Chan with his usual quiet authority and stunning charisma. Although he was not Asian (athough he believed his mother was part Mongolian), his winning characterization of Chan forever changed the way Asians would be portrayed in Hollywood films.
As for the Fab Four in this set: CC AT THE CIRCUS is the closest Charlie came to film noir, thanks to German director Harry Lachman. His films tended to be dark and moody and CIRCUS is no exception. Much of the film takes place at night and even indoor scenes have a sombre edge to them. Lachman would direct a few more Chans in the Sidney Toler era during the early 40s when the series changed direction and became compact little murder mysteries such as DEAD MEN TELL (1941). These later Chans are enjoyable on their own terms but totally different in style from the Olands of the mid-30s. CIRCUS features the entire CHAN clan including his wife. Mystery-wise, if you can't spot the real killer in CIRCUS, you should resign your membership in the Charlie Chan club! I think even Charlie knows early on but has nothing to pin on the culprit.
CHARLIE CHAN AT THE RACE TRACK marks a real jazzing up of the series stylistically. Director Bruce Humberstone, who was ambitious for more important projects at Fox, wanted to show Zanuck what he could do and pulled out all the stops in RACE TRACK. Right from the opening music behind the main credits, you know this one is different. The pacing is faster and optical wipes give each scene a sense of urgency. Charlie's relationship with son Lee also progresses with Lee being given increasingly important assignments by his Pop.
Unlike the earlier drawing room style of the films, in RACE TRACK Charlie takes on a whole gambling syndicate in addition to the murders in a wide ranging series of locales from Honolulu, to Melbourne, to Los Angeles, plus an ocean voyage in between. He's shot too! High tech is employed here as Chan learns about the "new" way of timing the races with photo-electric cells and photographing the photo finish. What I particularly like in RACE TRACK is that the film "language" gives an alert viewer a big clue at one point to put you on the track of the killer. Even at the climax, the killer slips up but nobody notices (momentarily), giving the viewer another chance to solve this one.
AT THE OPERA is generally considered to be the best of the Chans and its reputation is well deserved. Oland for once is co-starred, with Boris Karloff, and the two work well together although they only share one scene. The film might more accurately be titled CHARLIE CHAN MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA because that really describes the storyline. Since Karloff is so obviously the killer you just know somebody else has to be doing the dirty work and making it look like Karloff's to blame. But Charlie ain't fooled (nor are we because this is supposed to be a murder MYSTERY). High tech again is used to help solve the mystery as we (and Charlie) are treated to a demonstration of the process involved in wire photos.
Son Lee again proves indispensible and Director Humberstone delivers the goods once again. A special faux-opera was written for the film by Oscar Levant called "Carnival" and I hate to admit it but I wish Levant had turned it into a real full length work - the music is that good. I don't know who sang for Karloff but in case viewers wonder how his character could manage to sing so well after being a patient in an insane asylum for ten years, the opening scene shows him practicing every night. A bigoted detective comically played by William Demerest finally has to admit that "Charlie is OK" at the end. A real gem of a film.
The last one in this set, 1937's CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS (just love that title!), is the most globe-trotting of all the Chans and the most ambitious production-wise. The film starts with Oland in his undershirt jogging in place! The, uh, partial nudity shows that Oland had lost weight around his mid-section when compared with his appearance circa 1934-35. The film starts in Honolulu and has a scene eirily prophetic of the Pacific sea search for Amelia Earhart's lost plane that took place a few months after the film's release. Then Chan is off to intercept the ocean liner Manhattan that is in mid-Atlantic on its way to the Olympic games in Germany (son Lee is on the U.S. swimming team in case you're wondering how he gets worked into the story). Being 1936, the only way Charlie can catch the ship is to fly from Hawaii to L.A., then grab a transcontinental plane to New York, then grab the ill-fated German zepplin Hindenburg from Lake Hurst, NJ. And travelers today think they have it rough!
The plot actually has nothing to do with the Olympics but the film is so engaging, who really cares? The games are used as a backdrop for meetings by the spies with Chan, and there is some footage of the events including Jesse Owens's spectacular run for a gold medal. High tech is employed once more as Charlie pulls a real switcheroo by substituting a radio transmitter in the aircraft device the spies are after. Son Lee is kidnapped from outside the Olympic Stadium, and even Charlie thinks he has met his match.
Actor C. Henry Gordon, an alumnus from earlier Chans, almost steals the film as a most dapper villian. Things are so dangerous for Charlie that Mr. Gordon, one of the silver screen's silkiest villians, actually saves Chan from death TWICE, and Gordon is one of the bad guys! As in OPERA, the killer is well hidden although the series of clues that Chan puts together to unmask the culprit at the finale is less than convincing. It doesn't matter because the killer can't explain away a simple clue: spilt ink on his shoe and that seals his fate (no, not a spoiler - by the time the ink-on-shoe comes up, the killer is already unmasked - I just think it's the best clue!).
By the time OLYMPICS was made, Warner Oland was really "into" the Chan character so much so that he continued speaking like Chan offscreen and even signed his name, "Charlie Chan." As one interviewrer wrote in mid-1937, "I came to interview Warner Oland about Charlie Chan but ended up interviewing Charlie Chan about Warner Oland." So what was going on? I'm afraid that's a story to be told in Volume 3. I only hope that the Fox people take this DVD project seriously enough to scour their vaults for ANY materials - film footage but most likely photos - from Oland's final and uncompleted film, CHARLIE CHAN AT THE RINGSIDE, that he worked on during the first week of January 1938.
Related DVD's Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 (Charlie Chan at the Circus / Charlie Chan at the Olympics / Charlie Chan at the Opera / Charlie Chan at the Race Track)
Confucius Meets Sherlock Holmes
One 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... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Howard - Eugene Forde - Louis King DVD Release Date: Released the 20 June 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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What a treat to see high quality un-cut Perry Mason episodes on DVD. The show has been in syndication for years but you have been watching cut up versions so more commercials could be shown. Now you can enjoy the full length of 52 minutes that each Perry Mason episode lasted.
Each episode you see Perry Mason defending his clients rights to the fullest with zeal and uses his sharp wit to fluster those who would do his client harm. In episode "The Case of the One-Eyed Witness" look for a young Angie Dickinson. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Francis D. Lyon - James Goldstone - Jesse Hibbs - John Peyser - Gerald Mayer DVD Release Date: Released the 21 November 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The movies in this second collection of Tarzan adventures pass the Samuel L. Jackson Snakes on a Plane title test. Either you want to own a film called Tarzan and the Leopard Woman or you don't. And if you're a fan of the original Tarzan movies, then no doubt you must. These are the last six Tarzan films to star Johnny Weissmuller in the iconic role that spawned a thousand hollers (so ingrained is Carol Burnett's imitation of his signature shout-out that Weissmuller's own performance seems lacking!). Produced for RKO, they are low-budget affairs, but really, who watches Tarzan movies for the production values? The more fake the backdrops and the more obvious the mismatched stock animal footage the better! Tarzan Triumphs (1943) is the best... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Wilhelm Thiele - Kurt Neumann DVD Release Date: Released the 31 October 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Though the Charlie Chan film franchise has earned brickbats for its casting of Caucasian actors as the Asian sleuth, the movies have retained popularity among aficionados of '40s-era B-crime pictures, and the six-disc Charlie Chan Chanthology, all featuring Sidney Toler as Chan, should please that crowd. The Missouri-born Toler starred in 11 Chan pictures for Fox before purchasing the rights to the character from creator Earl Derr Biggers's widow and bringing it to budget studio Monogram, where he starred in 11 more Chans before his death in 1947 (Roland Winters replaced him in six more features until 1949). At Monogram, Chan became a Secret Service Agent (a move calculated to cut down on exotic locations and sets), and comedy was integrated into the plots via Mantan Moreland's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sidney Toler DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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