Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)

The Worst Film Ever

Powerful

I'll tell you why so serious

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The second Mr. Moto feature finds Peter Lorre on the Chinese frontier of the Gobi Desert with an archaeological expedition finding the last of a set of seven scrolls. They allegedly will lead to the as yet undiscovered tomb of Genghis Khan. Undiscovered and hopefully unpilfered like King Tut's tomb was it will contain fabulous riches.At least that's what villains Sidney Blackmer and two timing wife Nedda Harrigan hope for. Blackmer has already killed Harrigan's husband Sig Ruman for the other scrolls. Mother and son Philip Ahn and Pauline Frederick also die for these scrolls in one of the bloodiest of Mr. Moto features.Of course in the end Moto does triumph and when he does he keeps a vow to a dying man. He also plays on Frederick's jealousy and knowledge of what a rat Blackmer can be.Fans of the series will like this.

****SPOILERS**** International crime fighter Mister Kentaro "Kenny" Moto, Peter Lorre,is on a mission to see that the Chung family heirloom scrolls-all seven of them- stays in the family and not stolen by a gang of thieves to guide them, by putting the scrolls together, to the tomb and treasures, worth up to 10 million in gold and jewelry, of Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan. It was first that Moto had to deal with Colonel Tchernov,Sig Ruman, who attempted to get Prince Chung,Philip Ahn, to hand the scrolls over to him, by pulling a gun on the Prince, by offing him with a fatal judo chop-off camera-and making it look like he killed himself.It's then that the late Colonel's wife Madame Tchernov, Nedda Harrigan, had her goons try to get Moto to tell them where the scrolls were or else they'll not only kill him but Prince Chung and his mother Madame Chung, Pauline Frederick, as well. The attempts to murder Mr. Moto by Madame Tchernov's goons fell apart with him outwitting them at every occasion. But it was prince Chung who gave into them when they threatened to murder his mother who in fact was more then willing to die and in fact did then to give up where the scrolls were hidden.***SPOILERS*** It was when Mister Moto turned Madame Tchernov against her lover the real boss of this criminal operation Herr Koerger, Sidney Blackman, by claiming he was going to drop her for pretty socialite Eleanor Joyce ,Jayne Regan, which caused the two now ex-lovers to turn on each other. That give Moto the chance to gun down Koerger and neutralize, by having her arrested, Madame Tchernov when all the dust cleared. In the end Prince Chung committed suicide for dishonoring his ancestors by revealing where the scrolls were hidden but Mister Moto cleared all that up by burning them in preventing any more people getting killed over them as a favor , that he made while he was still alive, to the late Prince Chung!

I usually find it helpful to keep a scorecard when watching a Charlie Chan film to keep track of all the characters, for this one, you need it just for the action. Yikes! - it took about twenty movies in the Chan franchise to build up to four dead bodies in one outing, but here they pile up fast and furious. Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) is not above dispatching a few himself, and just as he did in the first film of the series (Think Fast, Mr. Moto), winds up throwing a man over board. There are other similarities as well, the biggest coincidence being the use of the name Marco Polo; here it's the name of a bridge, while in 'Think Fast', it was the name of a cruise ship.By this time, we know Moto to be an importer operating as a detective, but here we learn that he's also an adventurer, explorer, soldier of fortune and one of the Orient's great mysteries. Or so he's described by businessman Tom Nelson (Thomas Beck). In the story, Moto seeks to protect a missing scroll that when joined together with others to form a pattern, indicates the location of the burial place of Genghis Khan and a vast treasure. Of course, a host of others seek to own the desired scroll, as much as Madame Chung (Pauline Frederick) and her son, the Prince (Philip Ahn) are determined to protect it.Oddities abound in the film, as in the opening scene when Moto in disguise dispatches an assassin in the Gobi Desert, and proceeds to bury him - inside the tent! John Carradine makes an appearance in the story as an antiques dealer named Periera, and for some unexplained reason uses the terms 'senor' and 'senorita' when addressing Nelson and Eleanor Joyce (Jayne Regan). And say, could there really have been an American bar in China in 1937 called 'Mike's Place'? But you know what, most of it doesn't matter, because Mr. Moto is a bundle of energy uncovering the bad guys and tracking down the stolen Chung scrolls. He even concocts a romantic link between the main heavy Koerger (Sidney Blackmer) and Miss Joyce to create a jealous rage in Madame Tchernov (Nedda Harrigan), thereby undermining the villain's plot to discover the treasure. But the biggest shock of all is the way it ends, and for that you'll have to see the picture.With just a couple of the Mr. Moto films under my belt for now, it's quite unusual to see how differently he operates compared to the other Oriental Detectives of the era, notably Charlie Chan and Mr. Wong. Whereas the latter two solved their cases much more methodically, Moto combines clever analysis and martial action to achieve his results, and the results are entirely entertaining. Peter Lorre adds a distinctive flair to the Moto persona, and gets one excited about catching the next film in the series - Oh, so!

It's too bad this Moto entry strayed so far from its source material, as the arrogant Chinese prince and bandits in the original John P. Marquand novel were ever so much more interesting than the generic Eurogangsters and Philip Ahn's creepily Oedipal Prince Cheung in this one. Though the portrayal of Moto in the Peter Lorre-Sol Wurtzel series was never more than sketchy, he's even more fragmented motivationally in this lively but logistically incoherent adventure. Peter seems to have given up all hope of establishing a dramatic through-line and just plays it scene by scene according to whatever mood he was in, which makes it all the more dizzying to try and follow.