So…mystery movies. That genre’s sorta no longer around, and not even all that lamented. Sure, we get things like The Usual Suspects, Memento, or all that nonsense with twist endings, but they’re not really the same thing. I’m talking about those simple stories where an investigator, detective or whatever lucks into a mystery, then solves it. Agatha Christie stuff. Of course that format hasn’t been totally lost. In literary terms, millions of idle, cat-loving housewives still depend upon mystery novels for their entertainment during the commercials in between daytime soaps.There’s also the TV shows, the police and medical procedurals I completely ignore, where mystery thrives on a weekly basic. This is truly where cinematic murder mysteries have gone – to television. Once again, here’s that hypothesis which says all old B-movie genres have morphed into TV shows. For, to restate a common sentiment, B-pictures served audiences of the pre-TV 30s and 40s with the same episodic entertainment you can now enjoy nude from the comfort of your own hovel. If Charlie Chan existed today, he’d be on TV…and be significantly less racist.
Now we move on to Charlie Chan in Egypt, second film in a trilogy of Chan-sterpieces from 1935. See how common this gobbledygook, anti-gook stuff was then?
This was directed by Louis King, because these B-movies could switch out no-name 30s hacks all the time with no effect upon quality. It’s merely critical decorum that forces me to even bring him up. (Though Lord knows I’m fairly neglectful about citing directors.) And I know if I don’t bring it up here, there’ll be nothing in this movie where a “director” ever becomes evident.
I may have complained slightly about the merely moderate amount of extremely offensive racism in the Charlie Chan films so far. This is a stupid thing to complain about. Charlie Chan in Egypt totally redresses these “issues,” for it is perhaps the most racist movie I’ve ever seen…It’s certainly in the top five, and I’ve seen The Birth of a Nation.
The base-level of racism, Warner Oland’s Charlie Chan, eases us in to this, as our beloved Chinaman detective has traveled to yet another country to be humbled by its Caucasian expatriates. At this stage in the series, Chan’s own stereotyping barely phases me, and I’m not even aware of his aphorisms any more. So far, so standard, that is, until a most unwelcome appearance by the legendary Stepin Fetchit…How do I address this?...
Stepin Fetchit is the worst thing to ever happen to African Americans in cinema. He single-handedly sold out his entire race in the name of perpetuating a lazy, shif’less persona many Southerners would have found regressive during the Civil War. Seriously. We’re talking a slow-talking, slow-thinking, watermelon-obsessed fraidy-cat living on welfare and ready to acquiesce to anyone’s demands. We’re talking an actor known for phrases such as “I’se be catchin’ mah feets nah, Boss.” Jim Crow is this man’s best friend. And imagine all his dialogue as though uttered by someone drunk, high on helium and talking in slow motion.
Merely talking about Stepin Fetchit cannot make enough of an impression, so here is an image of the man:
Actually, that’s not fair…not fair to Jar-Jar. Here’s Stepin Fetchit:
And here comes a perfect storm of racism! You see, this is Egypt, and thus full of “Arabics” of a vaguely-defined ethnic nature. Indeed, while Chan and Fetchit are engaged in a remarkably alarming exchange that boils down to “Me so solly” and “Dinnah strike me, Massuh,” along comes a filthy Egyptian stereotype to make things complete. Here we have a “bakshish” crazed salesman, ready to con anyone out of anything for any reason. In this case, our Arab friend has somehow convinced Fetchit to be his loyal slave in order to repel “dem ghos’s.” Yee gods, man! Imagine that worst caricature of the Jews in Borat, only not meant as a joke…Okay, here’s an image of our Egyptian greedster:
It’s amazing, but I think I respect George Lucas even less now, if this sort of thing was his inspiration for Episode I.
I don’t know if I can keep up this righteous indignation for much longer. Rather I shall leave this racial nonsense behind me, and simply point out that this movie is damned racist. Rather, the time has come to look over the plot, and see how this movie plays into the great Charlie Chan legacy.
Well, Chan has reported to a nicely depicted Egypt (methinks there were preexisting sets at the Fox Studios) at the behest of the Archeological Society in France. Seeing how these last three films have vaguely bled into each other, I wholly expect Chan’s mission in the next entry to be a favor for some Egyptian organization – maybe the Shriners. Chan has arrived to investigate Egyptian artifacts that are not making it to their rightful owners – Western European museums. Ah, the archeological cultural imperialism of the 20s and 30s! This means Chan’s Egyptian adventure shall, quite unlike the French case, figure strongly into Egyptian specifics. The entire movie takes place in a series of ancient tombs and excavation sites. Indeed, pop cultural manias lasted longer back then, and the aftereffects of opening Tutankhamun’s tomb thirteen years earlier wear still being felt. All in all, Charlie Chan in Egypt is basically the franchise’s variation on Universal’s Mummy of 1932. I’d better hold off on much more mummy commentary, for I have three whole Mummy franchises to get to eventually.
Our standard formula characters make themselves known at the dig site. Let’s get the expected romantic lovebirds out of the way and over with: Carol Arnold (Pat Paterson) and Tom Evans (Thomas Beck, who played a different uninteresting cracker in Charlie Chan in Paris). There is also Professor Thurston (Frank Conroy), a genial old Egyptologist, and Dr. Racine (Jameson Thompson), the sinister, mysterious scientist. I am now firmly entrenched enough into the series to pinpoint the eventual killer from just those descriptions. Basically, we’re at the stage where the least obvious suspect is always the killer, while off-limits characters like the lovebirds are eternally out of bounds.
Well, we’ve set up the suspects. But what about a murder? Ah, believe it or not, that’s already been taken care of. For Carol’s father, Professor Arnold, is missing from the recent excavations. Chan busies himself in the labs inspecting the retrieved treasures, when he discovers a certain sarcophagus has been opened more recently than 3,000 years ago. To my immeasurable displeasure, this chest must be moved to the X-ray machine, and they must fetch Fetchit to do so. Behold Fetchit, uttering one of his few comprehensible lines to a local beauty, stating that “You wunna hafta fin’ no jobs theah ‘cause I know lots o’ white folk.” Oh God, you could stretch out a short script to feature length just by casting this slurring Sambo! Fetchit is instantly, screechingly terrified of handling a long-dead mummy. Me, I’d leap at the chance, and fry up the cooker!
Anyway, things are nice and horrifying as a beautifully desiccated mummy is disinterred from its coffin. Indeed, this Charlie Chan employs a noted devotion to the horror genre, which is not too far off from the mystery genre. Chan observes the mummy, noting that it has died – of a gunshot wound…Wait, what?! I’ve delayed this long enough – this mummy is the missing Professor Arnold. Ooh, cool mystery! More attention to always-welcome archeological terror and less to shufflin’ and jivin’ would’ve served this movie well.
Just at this moment, the lights go out and Carol screams from without. She has temporarily passed out, overcome by womanly stupors, and maybe a corset. Everyone apart from Chan attributes these latest doings to a mummy’s curse, but Chan thinks different. He knows what genre he inhabits! And, look, we’ve all seen “Scooby Doo,” we’re all familiar with that old “faux haunting” chestnut. It’s use here is absolutely no different (nor more competent) than its recent appearance in the latest Sherlock Holmes. There’s a slight curveball to all this, for while I would naturally expect the killer to scare people around with a cheapjack mummy costume, rather he does so with the glittering spirit of a sarcophagus. Such minor changes do matter in these affairs. And oh, the “Scooby Doo” revelation doesn’t come until the end of the film, and I’d suspect in 1935 this was a legitimately unique storyline…well, more so than it is today.
Anyone with a working familiarity of the Chan formula could piece together the rest of the plot well enough – this fact is making these movies increasingly tedious to sit through. Suspicions will be cast this way and that, the police will make a delayed and ineffectual appearance in the form of several be-fezzed “ethnics,” and the case will largely stall in the moments leading up to the traditional second death. I pray beyond all hope that the killer kill Fetchit next, as he remains a woeful omnipresence, gracing us with his grotesque pseudo-Negro cowardice. (See Blondie Has Servant Trouble for another example of me struggling with this particular ancient stereotype.) I will say, in this movie’s defense, that they have effectively solved my chief complaint from last time – the cast here is highly unique and easily distinguishable. If these 75-year-old movies continue to follow my advice, I expect Charlie Chan in Shanghai to not be racist…as much as Charlie Chan can be.
Ultimately, the second murder is of Barry Arnold (who sounds like a Bond film composer), Carol’s brother, and someone I had not positively ID’ed yet. Poor Carol, her entire family’s been killed off to satisfy mere narrative conventions. Barry’s death furthers the “mummy’s curse” hypothesis, as he seems to simply choke to death on nothing in the midst of violin playing. Chan again accurses the curse, blaming Barry’s death on his cigarettes – damn that tobacco! Actually, it’s time for fun with chemistry…we learn eventually.
It seems the second murder is usually the point where Chan truly starts investigating the first murder. Indeed, it is at this point that Chan opts to descend into the tombs where Professor Arnold’s nouveaux-mummy was obtained, bringing along Tom and (DAMN IT) Fetchit. This is perhaps my favorite part of the movie, because this represents the sort of thing George Lucas is right to pilfer – this is truly some proto Indiana Jones stuff here! You know, secret underwater passages, riddles in the hieroglyphics, secret catacombs full of treasure, the works! Just get rid of that bumbling, stumbling Jar-Jar inspiration, and you’re set.
Tom goes in first, being in good physical shape unlike the spherical Chan, and being unafraid of his own shadow, unlike the wretched Fetchit. He discovers Professor Arnold’s signature amidst a cache of fantastical undiscovered riches…Well, they’re somewhat discovered, for the killer has already arrived via some totally separate series of secret passageways (over-ambitious Egyptian builders). He shoots Tom with a handgun – the de rigueur attempted murder that always opens the Third Act. Tom collapses, his body flipping an astoundingly functional 3,000-year-old lever, as passageways open to let our two separate cultural caricatures waddle in. The killer flees.
Tom recovers in bed back at base camp. He is tended to by native servant girl Nayda (Rita Hayworth), who…
…Rita Hayworth! She’s back!
I had another surprise Hayworth encounter in the later disposable B-movie Blondie On a Budget. But this is now five years earlier, and she’s credited by her birth name Rita Cansino. She ‘s also seventeen here, not a fully-realized twenty-eight like in Gilda. Nonetheless, I shall celebrate this momentous occasion with the same image of Rita I showed last time:
A movie that requires images of both Stepin Fetchit and Rita Hayworth?! I think a black hole just opened up in my apartment…Wait, it’s just the sink again. One minute!
Okay, Rita Hayworth distractions aside, there’s only a little left to go. First Chan must solve the second, lesser murder. In Chan’s universe, not all human life is created equal. So it turns out Barry’s violin killed him…in a roundabout way involving harmonic frequencies, shattered glass and miniature pricks (not Chan’s, one hidden in the violin). This is all nicely complicated, in the sort of wonderfully elaborate way I’d expect from the “Sherlock Holmes” I’ve read.
I’m tired, so I’ll just reveal the killer now and explain the movie. Okay, it was Thurston – it was either him or Racine, and Racine was clearly too suspicious. And the motive? Protecting that hidden treasure catacomb, naturally. I mean, really, “Scooby Doo!” And, yes, the lovebirds embrace at the very end. Ah, formula.
So at this point I am at a loss as to how I shall end these Chan assessments. The general series quality is becoming evident, with reasonably fun little mysteries getting ruined by one 30s B-movie limitation or another. That major limitation this time is the one I’ve most dreaded – racism. And it’s a shame too that the movie had to start on such a disgusting note, as it takes all the mummies and Rita Hayworths in the world to wash that out. As it is, though, there isn’t nearly enough awesome Egyptian nonsense to cover up the Fetchitian flaws – he’s in nearly every scene that would otherwise be, god forbid, suspenseful and moody. Oh well, here’s to hoping this flaw can get resolved. These films could surely benefit from it.
Related posts:
• No. 3 Behind That Curtain (1929)
• No. 4 Charlie Chan Carries On (1931)
• No. 5 The Black Camel (1931)
• No. 9 Charlie Chan in London (1934)
• No. 10 Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)
• No. 12 Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
• No. 13 Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936)
• No. 14 Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
• No. 15 Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
• No. 16 Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
• No. 17 Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
• No. 18 Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
• No. 19 Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938)
• No. 20 Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)
• No. 21 Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
• No. 22 Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
• No. 23 City in Darkness (1939)
• No. 24 Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
• No. 25 Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
• No. 26 Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
• No. 27 Murder Over New York (1940)
• No. 28 Dead Men tell (1941)
• No. 29 Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
• No. 30 Castle in the Desert (1942)
• No. 31 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944)
• No. 32 The Chinese Cat (1944)
• No. 33 Meeting at Midnight (1944)
• No. 34 The Shanghai Cobra (1945)
• No. 35 The Red Dragon (1945)
• No. 36 The Scarlet Clue (1945)
• No. 37 The Jade Mask (1945)
• No. 38 Dark Alibi (1946)
• No. 40 Dangerous Money (1946)
• No. 41 The Trap (1946)
• No. 42 The Chinese Ring (1947)
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