The Black Camel

The Hollywood star Shelah Fane is seeing a wealthy man while shooting in Honolulu, but will not decide about marrying him without consulting a famous psychic first. That night Fane is murdered. Inspector Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police, taking the case, makes a connection between this death and an unsolved killing in Hollywood three years earlier. Everyone on the island has a story about that night. It is the earliest surviving of the films in which Warner Oland played Charlie Chan; the one before it and several straight after are lost, and a print of this one only turned up in 1970. The production was genuinely shot in Honolulu, so the city as it was in the thirties is on the record. The psychic is played by Bela Lugosi, who had played Dracula that same year, and Dwight Frye, Renfield in Dracula, appears as a butler. The source is Earl Derr Biggers's novel.