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.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Captain America is one of those characters that's always had a bit of an interesting screen history. By interesting, I mean depressing. His first on-screen appearance was in a 1944 Republic serial, played by an actor named Dick Purcell. It's not a bad serial per-se, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Captain America. In it, he's a D.A. who wears an outfit that sort of looks like Captain America's outfit and who punches crooks out of windows without even attempting to save them. After that, there were two TV movies in the 1970s. TV movies that were so bad, even my 8 year old self didn't like them, and my 8 year old self had occasionally rotten taste in movies and TV. There was movie in the 1990s with Matt Salinger that pretty much went straight to video and which I've never really had the fortitude to try to watch. So when Marvel announced yet another crack at the character, I inwardly groaned. So imagine my delight when this not only turned out to be the best screen version of the character, but one of the best comic book movies ever.

It's 1942 and WWII is at a fever pitch. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants to join the fight against the Nazis but has enough medical issues to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) recruits Rogers into the SSR as part of a Super Soldier experiment conducted by Erskine, Col. Chester Phillips (a hilarious Tommy Lee Jones) and British agent Peggy Carter (gorgeous Haley Atwell, who made such an impression she got her own TV show). Erskine's experiment is a success but the scientist is killed by an agent of Hydra, a Nazi offshoot run by Johann Schmidt, aka The Red Skull. Schmidt has just stolen a very dangerous artifact known as The Tessaract and is using it to build super weapons with which to conquer the world.

Rogers is demoted to selling War Bonds until Hydra captures his best friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). He then takes it upon himself to take the fight to Hydra. Along the way, he's assisted by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), who's son Tony will eventually become Iron Man, and Dum Dum Dugan and his Howling Commandos.

The thing that makes this movie stand out is the fact that it's an origin story we haven't seen a million times already. It's not Superman and the destruction of Krypton. It's not Peter Parker being bit by a radioactive spider. It's not Bruce Wayne watching his parents be murdered. You can make that argument for Iron Man and Thor, I suppose, but they don't have Captain America's frustrating film history behind them. For fans waiting to see if the character would ever appear in a good movie, the answer finally became yes.

The cast, as it has been for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is top notch. Evans performance as Cap is as iconic as Christopher Reeve's Superman was. Evans, unlike many of his contemporaries, is playing a hero who actually wants to be a hero. He isn't mopey, brooding, or nuts. In an age when even Superman can be moody, it's kinda refreshing to see a straight out good guy.

Hugo Weaving may not have liked his experience with the MCU playing the Red Skull but he's just behind Tom Hiddleston and James Spader as Marvel villains go. Assistant Armin Zola (Toby Jones) would return in other MCU properties, including the aforementioned Agent Carter.

Perhaps the best thing about the movie is that it's period appropriate. It's easy to forget that many of the iconic comic book characters started in the 30s and 40s. As a result, they don't always translate down the line. The Green Hornet is one of the better examples of a period specific character who doesn't do as well later on. Captain America was a product of WWII. His first comic book cover had him punching Hitler in the face. So it's great that this movie recognized that and went with it. Sure, due to The Avengers, they had to find a way to get him into the modern world, but by not modernising the origin, director Joe Johnson and Marvel gave us something fresh, fun, and different.