With a little bit of a bow to Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Mr. Moto's Last Warning has Peter Lorre going undercover at Port Said to help prevent disaster at the Suez Canal. As a member of the International Police (Interpol) Lorre goes in disguise as a harmless Japanese antique dealer to prevent skulduggery by Ricardo Cortez, George Sanders and assorted henchmen.
Cortez plays a music hall entertainer, a ventriloquist to be precise in the pay of a mysterious foreign power. The idea is to set off some undersea mines they've planted just as the French Fleet is going through the canal and get a nice incident going between Great Britain and France. After all as we learn in the film as long as the British and French stay friendly there can be no war.
It's good to remember that the Japanese while at war in China had not yet made an alliance with Germany and Italy. So in 1939 a film could still be made about a Japanese operative saving the British and French alliance.
Cortez is a very clever villain and Lorre gives himself away when he goes to the aid of Robert Coote playing a silly English agent who gets mugged. No mild little antique dealer could know judo like that as Cortez correctly surmises.
Of course Lorre saves the day, but it's a close run thing. Mr. Moto's Last Warning is a nicely paced, action packed film and actually correct for its time.
Cortez plays a music hall entertainer, a ventriloquist to be precise in the pay of a mysterious foreign power. The idea is to set off some undersea mines they've planted just as the French Fleet is going through the canal and get a nice incident going between Great Britain and France. After all as we learn in the film as long as the British and French stay friendly there can be no war.
It's good to remember that the Japanese while at war in China had not yet made an alliance with Germany and Italy. So in 1939 a film could still be made about a Japanese operative saving the British and French alliance.
Cortez is a very clever villain and Lorre gives himself away when he goes to the aid of Robert Coote playing a silly English agent who gets mugged. No mild little antique dealer could know judo like that as Cortez correctly surmises.
Of course Lorre saves the day, but it's a close run thing. Mr. Moto's Last Warning is a nicely paced, action packed film and actually correct for its time.