Hello, Everybody!
Just in case you missed this, 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment has finally put THE BLACK CAMEL out on DVD in the third set of vintage Warner Oland CHARLIE CHAN films, called - naturally enough - CHARLIE CHAN: CINEMA CLASSICS COLLECTION (Volume Three). The quality is outstanding on THE BLACK CAMEL - The BEST I have ever seen (and I've seen some good and incredibly bad versions on VHS and DVD over the years). It is worth it - if you are a Lugosi fan - just to get the set for this one film, believe me!
For those of you die-hard Karloff fans, the first CHARLIE CHAN sound film - technically speaking - is BEHIND THAT CURTAIN with Warner Baxter and Lois Moran. Charlie only appears for a few moniments toward the end to wrap most of the missing pieces together. He is played by a supposed English actor, E.L. Parks, but he sure looks and sounds like an authentic Asian actor (possibly of Englsih-Chinese heritage) to me! The film - based on CHARLIE CHAN author Earl Derr Biggers' own novel of the same name - is almost all about a murder and a three-sided "love triangle" involving three people, and most of the police work we see is done by a Scotland Yard inspector. Of interest to us, here is that Boris Karloff plays the faithful Indian servant of the hero (played by Warner Baxter). This film has gotten a "bum wrap" since it was rescued by film historian Alex Gordon after a fire in the Fox lot in the '60s. Had the story been reworked a few years later to star Warner Oland as "Chan" with a brisker pace, it might have been something of a minor classic. This film is hard to sit through, but it's in great shape, and it's kind of fun to see Karloff a couple of years before FRANKENSTEIN, honing his skills and waiting for a 'big break"!
Gordon rescued other films like the unbelievably weird science-fiction musical called JUST IMAGINE (which, visually is a treat if you can get throng watching comedian El Brendel and a long, drawn out plot and weird "early talkie" musical numbers" - to say the least. Visually, the film looks like a musical version of METROPOLIS, and is worth seeing for the sets, designs, Kenneth Strickfaden's FRANKENSTEIN machines and rocketships (which Universal would buy or borrow for FLASH GORDON later). I've always had a crush on Maureen O'Sullivan since I've watched the M-G-M 1930s TARZAN movies on TV as a youngster, but even she (who looks barely a teenager) can't save this one! Worth seeing for what it could have been! Weird, weird, weird!
Alex Gordon DID salvage some worthwhile films from the Fox vaults: THE BLACK CAMEL, CHANDU THE MAGICIAN and THE SPIDER. THE SPIDER was based on a play in which a magician solves a murder that happens right on stage. It was co-directed by fantastic set designer and artist, William Cameron Menzies, and it did well enough that its star Edmund Lowe would go on to do CHANDU THE MAGICIAN - also co-directed by Menzies and co-starring Bela Lugosi as the villain, "Roxor"! CHANDU THE MAGICIAN was based on the hit radio series for kids - close to the HARRY POTTER craze of our time - and it was MADE for kids, very much like a feature version of an old movie serial. It was supposed to be part of a horror-mystery boxed set from Fox - due later this year - but now only THE LODGER, HANGOVIER SQUARE and THE UNDYING MONSTER will be part of the set. CHANDU and a Fritz Lang classic, MAN HUNT, are not now included.
MAN HUNT, a great early film-noir thriller about a hunter (Gregory Peck) who is in turn, hunted by Nazi secret agents on the eve of World War II. The world-famous hunter - just to see if he can do it - breaks into the heavily fortified vacation home of Adolf Hitler and see if he can possibly kill him. When he sees that he can, and decides the world would be better off without him, he is captured. The hunter escapes, but is hounded by Nazi agents (George Sanders and John Carradine). Joan Bennett plays the beautiful woman who tires to help Peck's character stay ahead of the Nazis. (Joan Bennett, toward the end of her career, would appear in the classic horror-soap opera, DARK SHADOWS on TV.) It's a great thriller, and one can only hope that Fox will release it as part of their FILM NOIR collection, and that goes DOUBLE for CHANDU THE MAGICIAN! Maybe they will release it with the other Bela Lugosi films he made at Fox in the early 1930s?
For those of you interested in CHANDU THE MAGICIAN - the radio series, the feature film and serial (starring Bela Lugosi as the hero in THE RETURN OF CHANDU), Kristin Dewey and I are working like mad to finish a book on the subject that we hope to have finished - and maybe even published - before the year is out! Stay tuned! - "Herr Kohlzig"



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