darkside

My fingers are definitely crossed on this one. Its a must buy for me.

Cameron

ok barrie maxwell posted this in his column at the bits today

Various sources first in the fan community and now within the industry are lending credence to the likelihood that we will start to see Fox release its Charlie Chan films in 2006. As a further bonus, Mr. Moto may well be on the way too. This is still conjecture at this point, as I have been unable to get any industry confirmation on the record so far. My thanks to Tom Dubel for first alerting me to this situation, however. The scenario suggests that as part of a new "Cinema Classics Collection" line that Fox will introduce in 2006, the Fox Chan films will be released chronologically in sets of four with the first possibly scheduled to appear in March. Charlie Chan in London (1934) and Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) would appear to be certainties for the initial volume, but the others are less clear. A number of the early Chans are lost while Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) is only available as the Spanish language version Eran Trece. The Black Camel (1931) is now controlled by Warner Bros, I believe. Depending upon which if any of these is available to Fox, we may also get Charlie Chan in Shanghai in the first batch. Further volumes would follow in July and December. There are eight Mr. Moto films and these would potentially be released in two four-title volumes to appear in June and November of 2006. This is exciting information for all long-suffering Chan and Moto fans, but enthusiasm should be tempered until there is concrete confirmation.

Paul Drake

The Fox Chan series was rumored to be kicking off in March. Has anyone heard anything more?

Fox really hasn't done any announcements of their classic catalog in 2006 other than the just released 3 films in their Cinema Classics series plus the first batch of Marque Musicals. I hope they don't let a lot of their releases fly below the radar like they did in 2005.

Cameron

Barrie Maxwell wrote in his column this week

"Fox's Charlie Chan releases will not start to appear in March as originally planned; early summer now looks more likely."

So there ya go

Paul Drake

Thanks Cameron. That explains the silence from Fox. At least they're still on the schedule.

Paul Drake

Creepy Classics is reporting Volume 1 will be coming June 6th and contain the 1st 4 non missing Oland films that Fox has the rights to: London (with Ray Milland), Paris, Egypt (with Rita Hayworth), and Shanghai.

Paul Drake

Amazon is showing a 6/20 release date. $41.99 is the price.

darkside

I could not be happier to hear this news. I secretly hoped some of the lost Oland films might be discovered somewhere in some kind of condition to be put on a DVD, but I will be happy to take what I can get.

Cameron

great stuff

Paul Drake

Some insiders at Fox were telling people they HAD found one of the missing films, "CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON" and it was going to be included in the set. Unfortunately these people didn't know what they were talking about and it turned out they had a Spanish language version of this film made with different actors. This is supposedly going to be included as an extra. It's been available on the grey market for quite some time.

MUNKB

Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox has set a Garfield the Movie: The Purrrfect Collector's Edition for release on 6/6. Also on 6/6, [B][B]look for Charlie Chan Collection One (no details are yet available). They'll street Dharma & Greg: Season One on 6/13.

Paul Drake

Methinks the BITS has the wrong date (originally reported by Creepy Classics). Every online e-tailer that has this up shows a 6/20 date.

It's no secret what the films are (London, Paris, Egypt, Shanghai). What we don't have details on are all the extras (other than the Spanish language film).

Cameron

dvd times says

Fox Home Entertainment have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Charlie Chan Collection Volume 1 for 20th June 2006 priced at $59.98 SRP. This four-disc set includes four Charlie Chan films from the Fox era, with Charlie Chan In London (1934), Charlie Chan In Paris (1935), Charlie Chan In Egypt (1935) and Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) all presented in their original Full Frame aspect ratio with English Stereo sound. Bonus features include:

The Legacy of Charlie Chan Featurette (15mins)
In Search of Charlie Chan Featurette (20mins)
The Real Charlie Chan Featurette (20mins)
Eran Trece Fullscreen Feature (79mins)
Charlie Chan In London Theatrical Trailer
Eran Trece Theatrical Trailer

artwork at http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=60794

Mikael79

For me, getting the Chan and Moto films on DVD has been an important issue for years. I absolutely love the era and genre of the films, and I think it's a shame that they've been shelved for so long.

It seems as though the phone calls, faxes, emails, and letters (all of which I participated in) finally helped, although the timing of it makes me think that Fox wanted to wait until everything died down so it would seem as if the release was fully on "their terms". Either way, the wait will be worth it for me.

Paul Drake

I agree Mikael. The list of bonus materials that Fox has assembled for Chan Volume 1 is impressive. Even more impressive considering that they're new (meaning Fox is investing money to make these releases even more special).

Hopefully individual artwork will start showing up soon. Fox has been using original one sheet art and hopefully that trend will continue. Even cooler will be if they include lobby card reproductions as they have with other classic titles. I doubt they will though since no mention has been made of this.

Paul Drake

Amazon just dropped the price on the Vol 1 Chan set to $35.97. That's the lowest price I've seen by far. Even DDD is $8 higher.

Mikael79

^ I'm putting in a pre-order to lock in at that price. Less than a month to go until the set's release!

bboisvert

Awesome, thanks! Just placed my preorder at Amazon...

darkside

Just reordered it to get the new price. Great deal.

Paul Drake

Has anyone has found this early or seen any reviews?

darkside

Received mine yesterday and watched Charlie Chan in Paris. The video quality is nothing to write home about, but the negatives are lost on all of these films so I wasn't expecting it to have a King Kong quality restoration. I really love the care Fox put into the packaging. The box that the set comes in is really nice and the artwork for each movie is really classy looking.

So far I watched the In Search of Charlie Chan Featurette and really liked it. They did a pretty decent job with their brief history of Biggers and the early Chan movies. They touched on early Japanese actors that played Chan and on Warner Oland playing Asian characters for much of his hollywood career. The also talked about Key Luke and even took a shot at explaining Stepin Fetchit, but honestly that is a hard stereotype to deal with and one that will always be despised. The information was interesting, but they really needed an hour or more to deal with the people talked about in the featurette.

I will probably watch the rest of the films this weekend. Doesn't look like the video quality will be outstanding on any of them, but they are very watchable and look better than some of the bootleg crap floating around.

BTW, I ran across a bootleg of The Black Camel staring Oland as Chan and that included Bela Lugosi and Robert Young in the cast. The film was defintely in bad condition, but was pretty much watchable. I can only hope Fox at least includes this as an extra at some point, maybe on the remake Charlie Chan in Rio.

rw2516

I wonder why they skipped the first two(Behind That Curtain and The Black Camel). Fox Movie Channel showed both during the Chan festival couple years ago.

Mikael79

This is only a guess, but I'd say they may have based it on sales of the VHS versions that had been on the market for a long time. Being that there are no guarantees that these will sell well, and Fox may not release a Volume Two, they probably wanted to put the best sellers out first.

Paul Drake

Fox does not own home video rights to BLACK CAMEL. Warners does and will be releasing their own Chan set.

BEHIND THAT CURTAIN is a Warner Baxter film and not a Chan film. There is a Chan character in it, but it's little more than a walk on cameo. In my opinion, it's not a very entertaining movie either.

Fox will release Vol 2 before the year is out. Sales of Vol 1 have been quite strong (it even hit #1 at Amazon at one point). The plan is for Fox to release these somewhat chronologically. The 5 films in this set (including Eran Trece) are the earliest extant true Chan films that Fox has the rights to. The only film in this set that was released on VHS was PARIS. The other 3 have never been commercially released.

Each of these films looks much better than they did during their AMC days. All the splices, jumps, tears are gone. While contrast isn't reference quality for the earliest films, it's still more than adequate and certainly a huge improvement over the washed out versions that used to be available.

darkside

I watched Egypt and London last night and was pretty happy with the quality, especially on London which looked great. This is probably as good as we could ever have wished for these to look. There is a restoration demo on London and it does show the work that went in to the digital restoration. They really did wonders with very bad prints. You really get a feel for how close we were to losing more of these films forever.

The featurettes are excellent. The London disc really goes in depth on the Chan character and deals with the racism involved during the time and how if anything Chan was a major step forward for Asians at the time. I'm really happy they tried to deal with these issues on the first set and show why the Chan films are important and why they should be seen. I'm wondering if they will do the same with the Moto films.

The other featurette on the real police officer Chan was loosely based on is really interesting as well. Definitely lets you look back in time at a true larger than life character and a very different Hawaii.

Tonight I will watch Shanghai and I can't wait to watch the Spanish language version of the first film. As far as volume 2, bring it on Fox. You have my money for all the Fox Chan films. I never could stand the Poverty Row Chan films though and passed on that set from MGM. However, a future set from Warner definitely has my interest.