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Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 Movie Streaming. Movie Title: Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 Average customer review: Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2

Volume 2 in Fox’s Charlie Chan DVD Collection seems not to have been released as grand 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 enjoy I’m the first one here to review it.

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Full disclosure: I bear Volume 1 and fair purchased Volume 2 through Amazon. So my review at this point is based on my (repeated) TV viewings dating help to the mid 1960s through unbiased a few years ago before the Fox Movie Channel banned the CC films. I noticed that Fox skipped one film in this location, CHARLIE CHAN’S SECRET (1936) that preceeded the four films in Volume 2. Why? I can only guess except that SECRET is a sincere 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 quiet 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 detached authority and handsome charisma. Although he was not Asian (athough he believed his mother was portion Mongolian), his winning characterization of Chan forever changed the design Asians would be portrayed in Hollywood films.

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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 shaded and changeable and CIRCUS is no exception. Worthy of the film takes position at night and even indoor scenes have a sombre edge to them. Lachman would exclaim a few more Chans in the Sidney Toler era during the early 40s when the series changed direction and became compact itsy-bitsy kill mysteries such as Boring MEN Shriek (1941) . These later Chans are luscious on their absorb 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 situation the true killer in CIRCUS, you should resign your membership in the Charlie Chan club! I judge even Charlie knows early on but has nothing to pin on the culprit.

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE Bustle TRACK marks a right jazzing up of the series stylistically. Director Bruce Humberstone, who was ambitious for more notable projects at Fox, wanted to exhibit Zanuck what he could do and pulled out all the stops in Hurry TRACK. Good from the opening music late 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 necessary assignments by his Pop.

Unlike the earlier drawing room style of the films, in Hasten 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 “current” diagram of timing the races with photo-electric cells and photographing the photo enact. What I particularly like in Accelerate TRACK is that the film “language” gives an alert viewer a ample clue at one point to establish 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 part 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 honest know somebody else has to be doing the dirty work and making it ogle like Karloff’s to blame. But Charlie ain’t fooled (nor are we because this is supposed to be a kill MYSTERY) . High tech again is mature to befriend solve the mystery as we (and Charlie) are treated to a demonstration of the process interested 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 abhor to admit it but I wish Levant had turned it into a actual beefy length work - the music is that first-rate. I don’t know who sang for Karloff but in case viewers wonder how his character could manage to scream 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 destroy. A exact gem of a film.

The last one in this residence, 1937’s CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS (objective esteem 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 set! 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 location 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 map 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 sage) . Being 1936, the only draw Charlie can score the ship is to skim from Hawaii to L.A., then grab a transcontinental plane to Original York, then grab the ill-fated German zepplin Hindenburg from Lake Hurst, NJ. And travelers today judge they have it rough!

The location actually has nothing to do with the Olympics but the film is so enchanting, who really cares? The games are former as a backdrop for meetings by the spies with Chan, and there is some footage of the events including Jesse Owens’s spectacular rush for a gold medal. High tech is employed once more as Charlie pulls a valid switcheroo by substituting a radio transmitter in the aircraft contrivance 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 tidy villian. Things are so uncertain 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 poor 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 define 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 objective assume it’s the best clue!) .

By the time OLYMPICS was made, Warner Oland was really “into” the Chan character so great 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 troubled that’s a memoir to be told in Volume 3. I only hope that the Fox people select 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.

Many critics feel the Charlie Chan films did not truly hit their rush until 1936 and 1937, when the release of four particularly gripping titles situation a fresh standard for the series. THE CHARLIE CHAN COLLECTION, VOL. 2 not only presents those four films, it restores them as well; after years of neglect, Warner Oland, Keye Luke, and company glance better than ever.

Charlie was novel created by novelist Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933), who very loosely based the character on Hawaii’s legendary police officer Chang Apana (1887-1933.) Biggers wrote six novels in all, and after several counterfeit starts 20th Century Fox (then simply known as Fox) hit on the just combination of actors, mystery, and comedy, and the result was perhaps the single most common film series Hollywood ever created. Although contemporary audiences tend to concept the films as politically improper, the fact remains that Chan and his family–most often personified by Keye Luke as son Jimmy–were among the very few determined Asian characters on American movie screens at the time; as such they were particularly current with Asian-American audiences of the day.

The four Chan films in this collection are actually the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th releases in the series, all starring Warner Oland as Chan, all featuring Keye Luke as son Jimmy Chan, and all but one directed by the generous and exacting H. Bruce Humberstone. The most eminent title is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA, which co-stars Oland with Boris Karloff in what many contemplate to be the single finest film in the series. Featuring an operatic gather written by Oscar Levant, the narrative finds Chan called upon to protect diva Lilli Rochelle (Margaret Irving), who has received a death threat. It soon transpires, however, that Madame Rochelle is no blushing innocent: she has a past that includes “an escaped maniac” in the originate of Boris Karloff, and no sooner does the overture launch than assassinate is afoot. The film is unexpectedly stylish; the distinguished cast includes William Demarest and Nedda Harrigan; and the script very distinctly works to undercut racist notions of the day, with Demarest at first offensively derrisive but ultimately impressed with Chan’s skill.

Although not as highly budgeted as OPERA, AT THE Rush TRACK and AT THE OLYMPICS also maintain Humberstone’s definite touch. Hurry TRACK finds Chan matching wits with a gambling ring positive to turn otherwise fair horse races to their advantage. John Henry Allen’s portrayal of “Streamline,” a Stepin Fetchit-like character, is perhaps most charitably viewed as a measure of how far African-American actors have advance since the 1930s; this aside, however, the cast is solid and the myth titillating. AT THE OLYMPICS is remarkably disconcerting from a historic point of idea. Opening in Hawaii and making references to Pearl Harbor, the film concerns the theft of an aircraft method which has military application. Chan is soon on his contrivance to Berlin via The Hindenberg, no less, and finds himself confronting a host of spies and counterspies at the 1936 Olympics. Interestingly, the film makers work hard to avoid mention of the Nazis; although stock footage abounds–including footage of Jessie Owens–the inevitable swatiskas are kept out of focus or more obviously simply blotted out.

While the three Humberstone films in this plot tend to receive the bulk of valuable favor, my acquire celebrated in this collection is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE CIRCUS. Directed by Harry Lachman, who would go on to mutter other Chan films somewhat later, the film is long on charm in its epic of abolish under the broad top, complete with sultry trapeze artists (Maxine Reiner), dancing runt people (George and Olive Brasno), slinky contortionists (Shai Jung), and even one of those unpleasant 1930s ape costumes. Chan films seldom inconvenience themselves too worthy with site detail, and AT THE CIRCUS is a particularly flyweight entry; even so, it is tremendously comic, unexpectedly atmospheric, and George and Olive Brasno are standouts among the supporting cast.

The remasters are not flawless, but they are very obedient indeed. I must, however, sound a slightly sour designate re the bonus features, which are piquant in themselves but which dinky in comparison with what might have been done if the studio had really attach its heart into it. Level-headed, the Keye Luke biography is particularly welcome (moderns tend to overlook the truly groundbreaking nature of his career) and the “Charlie Chan at the Movies” featurette is quite nice. Overall, I strongly recommend this collection to Chan fans everywhere.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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