Movie review - Chan#2 - "The Black Camel" (1931) **

Of interest to film buffs for two reasons - its the only one of the first five Warner Oland Charlie Chan films to survive, and it features Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye in the cast. The story is set in Honolulu and involves the death of an actress while shooting a movie. There is some location footage of the islands (including early surfing), Chan has a bumbling Japanese assistant, Bela plus a mysterious medium and is a red herring (but  has quite a large part and its fun to see him), the early scenes move around a bit and the story is quite decent. But as it goes along it gets increasingly bogged down and winds up with the usual suspects standing around while Chan talks.