Wrote It, Then Realized I Had Already Written It

 

The Black Camel Rides ... Again

Decided on a whim to watch this, and awfully glad I did. What with fresh Blu-Rays pouring forth (more now than ever, it seems), do we even recall forlorn discs released years ago that sit locatable, or not, on shelf or stacks? Oh, for days when a single 16mm print, or bounty of three or four features in that format, was stuff of unbounded joy. The Black Camel was released among what Fox made with Charlie Chan, save the lost ones (will these be screened in Heaven? If it is indeed heaven, then yes). Watching a Chan leads always to resolve that I must see them all again, that swept way as focus is diverted elsewhere. These are like cartoons, serial chapters, B west, as in a few will do, thank you. I address The Black Camel for guessing there was no Chan like it, being shot in the altogether on Hawaii islands (and don’t disillusion me by saying that wasn’t the case). This surely wowed viewers in 1931. And they got murders besides. I don’t know how well woven Earl Derr Biggers’ stories were, but this one is a honey … kept me guessing, with a resolution that not only made sense, but enriched characters otherwise a red herring or plain props to fatten a suspect list.

Surfers are there under credits, looking for all a tropical world like opener titles for Hawaiian Eye. A first scene is shot on the beach. Fox Film Corporation wants us to know we are someplace other than same places. How many folks in 1931 had even seen postcards of Hawaii? There is as much outdoor shooting as traffic will bear. I felt like Cinemascope location policy was being put in motion twenty years ahead of schedule. They should have made this in “Grandeur” instead of The Big Trail and spared that crew hardship. The Black Camel would have plentiful reward without a shot fired or dagger thrown. A tracking camera guides us round lush lobby that was the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Does present management realize they are focus of such a precious time capsule? Cast and crew got the free trip, plus presumed pay. From jaws of a Depression to this … must have been intoxicating. Night scenes are done amidst palms, flashlight chasing after a killer in flight, more creep-about bamboo huts. I might have left a first run demanding all films have so authentic a background. And this was “only” a Charlie Chan mystery.

Chans were not B product then. Any more than George O’Brien westerns made by Fox. Support for Oland is out of top drawers, no one playing down to content. Bela Lugosi is a fake swami, and it’s like, here we go again, but how he shades the part, and what we learn of his “Tarneverro” lends depth beyond that expected of a most obvious suspect who, in time-honored fashion, turns out not to be the killer. I was pleased to see Bela amidst luxury trappings of the Royal Hawaiian, nattily dressed in full “belong” status with swells he appears to graze upon. He and Oland talk lots, as if director Hamilton McFadden observed how effective they were together, and said Let’s Have More. Watch this and tell me again about “Poor Bela.” Oland’s stooge assist from the precinct, “Kashimo,” is such a doofus, I wonder why keep him on the job? Less attractive aspect of Chan is him treating underlings like underfoot pets, a facet smoothed once Number One or Two sons filled the comic slot, Charlie’s annoyance more an expression of filial affection much put upon. The Black Camel’s Chan clan shares a dinner scene with dad that is very funny, each of kids too precocious for him to seize verbal advantage, them in fact sassing back with Occidental slang enough to all but chase befuddled Charlie away from his meal.

I like mysteries where a solution harks back to distant events, and more so where the killer had some revenge motive paying off on that past. If all Chans are clever as this, maybe I do need to screen the lot again, save Roland Winters and some of later Tolers. I did not mention Dwight Frye being in The Black Camel, as if we need another reason to watch, having forgot myself that he was here, so there was a midway spike, and yes, Frye is most important to the outcome, another plus. He even grapples briefly with Bela, having no better luck than he did on the steps at Carfax Abbey. Imagine if The Black Camel were one of the lost Chans. We would have gone our lives dreaming of what it was like … Oland, Lugosi, Frye, the Big One with the Big Three. Somehow it was saved, useful for an early TV release. Purely random rescue. The DVD looks better than such distressed remains ought to, leap/bounds over a boot I once had that froze before killers could be sorted out, which maybe was what I deserved for going rogue after my movie wants. 

HOLD THE WIRE: Senility, it seems, is upon me. Remember The Black Camel at Greenbriar back on July 24, 2006? Well, I did not, thus the above revisit with barely enough fresh wordage not to get tossed for stale bread. Overlook the incident then, for being a first such stumble, and credit The Black Camel as fun enough to inspire two columns, fourteen years apart or not. But beware this happening again, for what if I forget of having drawn from Vertigo and Horror of Dracula wells multiple times before, going back to worn-sole subjects with increasingly addled prose. Be glad I caught the muff rather than one of you having to alert me. Readers would next be asking if I’m sure where the car keys are, or for that matter, the car. For ones who would compare, The Black Camel as first appreciated is HERE.