Charlie Chan Carries On

The only version of "Charlie Chan Carries On" I've found is one on Youtube which stars Manuel Arbó and is called Eran Trece. It is labeled on Youtube as starring Warner Oland, but Mr. Oland is not in this version.

(Spanish version) This movie is so badly directed and acted to be embarrassing to all associated with or viewing this movie. It is a complex plot with continuity problems and intentional miscues.

There is some almost extreme overacting, overreacting to situations. I have seen other early movies where the acting was extreme. At least the male actors were not wearing lipstick and eye makeup as with many movies of this era.

In one scene in the telegraph office, a man shoots from between a window and a door through the window. We see only the arm extending from the shooter which places him between the door and window. He shots then "disappears" without going past the door and would have to had duck-walked or crawled under the window. Someone is out the door looking in about 3 seconds. He sees nobody. That's almost impossible. Poor staging! Unbelievable action!! It is watchable but almost laughable without intending to be funny. And so many unresolved red herrings! I would write a synopsis but this is the most confusing story I have seen in a long time. Many plot threads opened and left open for a long time or forever.

I am hoping for a good group-in-a-room ending with lots of explanation to make sense of this mess.

The group scene happened and the villain was caught but, by the end, you won't care much who it was...

I love IMDb--perhaps that is why I have written so many reviews. However, it annoys the heck out of me when I am searching on films and find reviews and lots and lots of scores for films that have disappeared over the years and cannot possibly have been seen. Unless you are about 100 years-old and have PERFECT recall, you have no business scoring this film as it does not exist--the film having been destroyed in a fire in 1931. So stop scoring films that don't exist--it screws it up for people who really want to find out about a film--not see the votes of some cult-like followers of a particular series. The same is true of the Marx Brothers first film--a short that Grouch described as a terrible film. Yet, despite not having been seen since the 1920s, it has tons of scores on IMDb! Do yourself a favor. Get the Charlie Chan box set and see "Eran Trece"--this is the Spanish language version the studio made at the same time they were making "Charlie Chan Carries On"--a common practice during the early days of sound films. Studios like Fox and MGM often made multiple versions of films for international release and sometimes even used the original stars--having them deliver their lines phonetically. Interesting.

'Charlie Chan Carries On' with Warner Oland was remade with Sidney Toler as 'Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise'. It is about Charlie meeting a Scotland Yard detective in Honolulu who tells Charlie about the case he is working on. The English detective gets murdered and so Charlie Chan carries on with his investigation.

In my recent review of Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise, I mentioned that was based on the book "Charlie Chan Carries On" and that all I remembered from that novel was the fact that Chan didn't appear until the middle of it! So I just watched the trailer of the first filmed version of that book on YouTube and it was very fascinating seeing Warner Oland portray the Honolulu detective for the first time! Unfortunately, the movie itself is lost so this is all that remains of the first filmed version but in the future, who knows? Now I may review the rest of the series that I hadn't watched or reviewed on this site from 1929's Behind That Curtain to 1971's The Return of Charlie Chan...