Mystery Monday: Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938)

The third entry in the Mr. Moto series, Mr. Moto's Gamble may well be the first ever movie crossover. Before Frankenstein met The Wolfman, before King Kong vs. Godzilla, and certainly decades before the Marvel crossovers, Mr. Moto met Charlie Chan. Sort of.

Mr. Moto's Gamble began life as Charlie Chan at the Ringside with Warner Oland as Chan and Keye Luke as Number One Son, Lee Chan. After a week of filming, Oland walked off the set due to a variety of reasons. Fox finally decided to cut their losses and rewrite the film as the 3rd Moto. But they kept Lee Chan in the script and the movie makes reference to Charlie on several occasions, even going so far as to have Lee refer to him as "Pop" as he always did. This would be the last time Luke played Lee until the last two Roland Winters movies.

The film starts inexplicably with Moto teaching a criminology class at an unnamed university. Among his students are Number One Son and a kleptomaniac who wants to become a detective (boxer Maxie Rosenbloom). Moto and Chan go to a boxing match that night with Lt. Riggs (Harold Huber). The match turns deadly when one of the boxers is murdered with a poisoned boxing glove. Moto naturally investigates, uncovering a gambling syndicate along the way and even more murders. He also gets an occasional assist from Lee and does an awful lot of quotes that sound very Charlie Chan-ish.

There is some amusement in spotting the supporting cast. Pierre Watkins and John Hamilton, both of whom played Perry White in Superman--Watkins in the serial, Hamilton on TV--both are in this, even though they don't share any scenes. Douglas Fowley, best remembered for Singin' in the Rain and Cat Women of the Moon, is one of the gamblers. Frequent John Wayne costar Ward Bond is one of the boxers, the champion Biff Moran. Lon Chaney, Jr. also pops up in a small role.

As a Chan film, this would be tops. As a Moto film, however, it's merely okay. Part of the problem is the fact that the two characters are so different. Moto is a spy, fairly ruthless, and very action oriented. Chan is a sleuth, the type who walks into the room, asks a few questions, and says "You are murderer". Having Mr. Moto as a pure sleuth type is like having Chan played as a karate fighting woman. Oh, wait. They were gonna do that a few years back with Lucy Liu.

It's not that it's an appreciably bad movie. None of the Moto movies are bad. But this is definitely the odd man out of the series, a slowish procedural that follows two great spy thrillers. Even the inclusion of a sort of fight late in the film doesn't entirely help. The film's saving grace is as a curiosity piece for the scenes between Moto and Lee.  It's mostly worth watching, but not really representative of the rest of the films. Fortunately, the next film would be a return to form for the series.

Mystery Monday: Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)

After the success of Think Fast Mr. Moto, 20th Century Fox wasted no time bringing Peter Lorre back as the deadly international spy. Released five months after the first film, Thank You, Mr. Moto concerns the search for seven scrolls that will lead to the Tomb of Genghis Kahn. And it's as much a corker of a thriller as it's predecessor.

Moto is in possession of one of the scrolls. After disposing of a would be assassin in the Gobi Desert and eluding the police in Peiping, Moto is invited to a garden party given by Colonel Tchernov. The party is supposed to be in honor of American Eleanor Joyce (Jayne Regan) but is really just a ploy to try to get six of the scrolls from Prince Chung (Philip Ahn). Moto kills Tchernov after he draws a gun on Chung for not selling. Eleanor, however, walks in as Moto makes it look like suicide. This causes her to be suspicious of Moto. Her suspicions grow when Moto is involved in a drive by shooting. But when the real villains go too far, they end up facing the wrath of Moto.

One of the joys of these movies is watching Lorre as Moto. We might know which side he's on, but the way he plays the character, it is completely believable that others may not be too sure of him. He's terrific in these, playing Moto in an almost shade of grey. Certainly, he's unique among the detectives in the movies at that time. Only The Saint seemed to straddle the fence and not quite as much as Moto. It's easy to see why Lorre went on to become such an icon.

Besides Lorre, Thomas Beck and Sig Ruman make their second appearances in a Moto film. Beck is again playing the lovestruck American who falls for the heroine while Ruman is the ill-fated Colonel Tchernov. Character actor John Carradine is a dealer in antiquities trying to sell a counterfeit scroll, first to Eleanor then Moto. But Philip Ahn as Prince Chung is the most notable of the supporting cast. Ahn in appeared in a number of serials in the 30s and 40s before later having quite a TV career. Some may remember him best as Master Kan on Kung Fu. As Chung, he is the most sympathetic character in the movie and his fate is actually heartbreaking.

Once again, Norman Foster keeps the proceedings movie. The Moto movies are probably the best paced B series ever and Foster's direction seems to play a good part in it. No silliness, no songs, just pure intrigue and mystery. It's a shame that all programmers weren't as good.

The next stop for the character was a film intended for one of his rivals. It will be most interesting to see how that one turns out.

Mystery Monday: Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)

In the 1930s, there were two types of Asians in cinema: the Yellow Menace, most famously personified by Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, and the inscrutable detective, the best known-- and in some ways most infamous-- being Charlie Chan. While the Chan films are a ton of fun, perhaps the best done of these was 20th Century Fox's Mr. Moto series starring Peter Lorre.

Think Fast, Mr. Moto was the first entry in the series, released in 1937 and based on the novel by John P. Marquand. Our memorable introduction to the character occurs during the film's Chinese New Year. Moto, disguised as a street peddler, tumbles to a murder in a curio shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. He manages to escape an incompetent cop and a would-be assassin.

The next day Bob Hitchings, the obligatory Rich White Playboy character (Thomas Beck), is sent by his father to Shanghai. Senior Hitchings runs a shipping line that is under scrutiny by the government due to smuggling activities. Moto, as it turns out, is also interested in smugglers and the Hitchings line. Moto just happens to be in the stateroom next to Bob and befriends him, though to what end we're not sure. They're eventually joined by Gloria Danton (Virginia Field), the obligatory Mysterious Blonde Woman who seemingly falls in love with Bob but may be working with the villains. Attempted murder, kidnappings, and intrigue follow.

Think Fast, Mr. Moto runs a breezy 66 minutes with no filler such as long, bad comedy routines. If that seems an odd statement, consider that most programmers--even the early Chans--did get bogged down with poor comedy routines from the likes of Smiley Burnette and Stepin Fetchit. What humor there is comes organically, much of it done by Lorre himself. There is a song, but it's short, fairly pleasant, and doesn't stop the film dead in its tracks. Interestingly, the film is more of a spy story than a murder mystery. Indeed, Moto is a proto-James Bond, just minus the sex and gadgets. He's polite like Chan but ruthless and sneaky, tossing one villain to his death over the side of a ship and cheating another at cards.

The Moto series started the same year that the Boris Karloff Mr. Wong series started but Lorre does much better than Karloff. Even if Lorre doesn't look even remotely Japanese, he sells the performance and is a delight to watch. The rest of the cast--which includes J. Carroll Naish as one of those stereotypical ethnic villains he would play from time to time--all do just fine. Norman Foster directs the whole affair with a pace that never lags making for an above average programmer. You could spend 66 minutes watching worse movies.