AMUSEMENTS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 September 1937, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS

REGENT THEATRE. TO-NIGHT AND FRIDAY.” •‘CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA” / ' What is the formula that has mad. l .lie Charlie Chan pictures the most successful scries of films in the history of the screen? Here’s how John Stonie, associate producer of ‘‘Charlie Chan at the Opera”, the latest of the Twentieth Centurv-Pox adventures of the crafty Chinese sleuth, explains it: “Kirst of all”, said Stone, a former New York school teacher and an amateur criminologist, ‘‘the crime that Warner Oland, as Charlie Chan, is to be called upon to solve in each picture, should involve mjurder. That’s really serious business. “We go into a protracted huddle—the writers and myself—months before our picture is to go into production, and we devise an insolvable murder. Logical, yes, but with no clues that even the smartest deteeth e in Ihe world could use to track down the killer. “Having done that, we turn around and play detective, and solve our own crime. “Charlie Chan at the Opera,” the thirteenth of the series, which we just completed, i.s a good example of our mode of operation. I doubt very much if anyone will be many guesses ahead of Detective Chan in this picture, yet we place before our audience each clue available to Chan. “It’s a lot of worn hut it’s a lot of fun, too, and the steadily increasing popularity of the Chan pictures indicates that it’s a pretty practic'd svstem as well.” With W arner Oland as Charlie Chan and Boris Karloff playing his maniacal foe, “Charlie Chan at the Ooera,” opening to-night at the Regent Theatre i s promised as the most .exciting and rervo-ianglmg mystery tho famous detective has ever encountered.