Strong and Moving!

Sadly Over-hyped

People are voting emotionally.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It starts with scared animals running through the forest in this movie like they are afraid of something right in the beginning. I think it was the noise of a plane. The pilot a female, Victoria Mason is above Cambodia near Angkor Wat. She is suppose to fly around the world. She is up to something and she torches the plane to set it on fire and parachutes out.There are also camera men from another country in a canoe with a large camera there to take pictures of that country.Moto is at archaeological dig. He goes to where the airplane crashes and finds the torch that set the plane on fire. He knows something is not right. In the story we don't find out why she did that.Moto is Japanese and is on this island with mixed tribes. One leader wants to kill all white people including the camera men and the other leader Rahah Ali played by J. Edward Brombergrefers wants to marry Victoria the "white" woman. He is very funny.Moto has a cage with a homing pigeon that he sends with messages. He is kind of rough and the pigeon seems to fight. Moto puts a message on him and releases the bird. One of Rahah Ali wives is killed by a dart and they think it was a curse. Victoria is his choice as a wife. Whites are referred to in a bad way by the tribal people.Moto is on a mission he plays a prophet or something in disguise and also a archaeologist. In disguise he directs people away from a temple. He is searching for something and finds a room full of guns and explosives in the temple. He sends Bokor and his men away to watch Moto at the dig. At some point another shipment of guns comes and all hell breaks loose.The funny thing is that everyone's clothes are so clean in all these old movies and Rahah Ali's women are all dressed in jewels and more. Moto's suit is white and even when he comes up from the ground he is spotless. Victor Sen Yung that plays in Charlie Chan as a son is a soldier uncredited in this movie.There is lots of shooting, lots of fires, lots of people from different countries, music, humor and mystery.

"I find it very wise not to interfere with the customs of other people," says Kentaro Moto, export dealer, hand-to-hand combat specialist, expert with disguises and, in Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, a spy for the French in Indochina. Since the French were quite used to interfering in the customs of the peoples they lorded it over in Indochina and elsewhere, what a let- down with this movie, in more ways than one. After the great start of the series with Think Fast, Mr. Moto and Thank You, Mr. Moto, this third in the outing sticks us back firmly in the low budget, do-what-it-takes, quickie category of programmers. Take away Peter Lorre as Moto and we'd have a tired jungle drama of nefarious natives, banana plants and the occasional crocodile. The only real mystery is how Mr. Moto keeps his white suit so clean in the jungle. The plot involves a plot, of course, and this one is by Bokor, high priest in the royal village of Tong Moi, not too far from Angkor Wat. He wants to do some overthrowing which will involve the Raja Ali, a seemingly jolly, chubby man who delights in his wives so much that he plans to add Vicki Mason, aviatrix and adventuress who had to bail out of her plane, to the roll call. We realize that the Raja may have more on his mind than Vicki as he goes about shooting down the carrier pigeons that an archaeologist is sending out. The archaeologist, of course, is Mr. Moto. It's not long before we encounter a wizened holy man almost as ancient, it seems, as a particular temple in the jungle. I won't even hint as to who the holy man really is. We also encounter a couple of newsreel free-lancers in a dugout, a cobra in a basket, a poison dart in a beautiful back, a cameraman in a tiger pit and a lot of munitions hidden in that temple. We begin to suspect that there is another spy working for the French. The Hollywood solution, naturally, involves a good deal of gunplay and the casual blowing-up of a great, hundreds-of-years-old, vine-encrusted temple. One assumes that the French, when they learn about this from Mr. Moto, will consider the destruction regrettable. Hollywood, however, can at times be prescient, however inadvertently. Snarls one major character, "We will not rest until we drive every foreigner from Asia!" At the time, that probably seemed unlikely and terribly unfair to all those foreigners. Lorre brings to Kentaro Moto his typical amusing mixture of lethal bonhomie and polite death-dealing, unencumbered, it seems, by any regrets. The other actors, however, are a gaggle of B players with one exception. J. Edward Bromberg plays the Raja. He was always a reliable actor and a good one. At the end of the Forties he found himself blacklisted because he refused to testify before a Congressional committee if he'd ever been a Communist. He had the quaint notion that in America a person's political beliefs are nobody's business but his own. The film jobs instantly vanished. He was married with a wife and three young kids to support. In 1950 he finally left for London, hoping to get a new start there. People who knew him said he was under a great deal of stress and had aged noticeably. He died within the year of a heart attack. He was 48. To end on a more pleasant note I'll need to mention Chick Chandler, an energetic light-comedy actor who plays the cameraman, Chick Davis. He looks just like a cross between Joe E. Brown and George W. Bush.

For the 4th Fox Moto the script took a nosedive and crashed like Rochell Hudson's plane did at the beginning. You could tell it was going to be a bumpy ride as she was flying over Angkor Wat and awe-struck by its beauty for a full half second. The overall intelligent production and sinister atmosphere generated by the sets more than make up for it though and keep me coming back."Grave-digger" Moto played beautifully superciliously by Peter Lorre is trying to discover and stop a plot to overthrow a Cambodian Rajah (?) played by mincing and wincing J. Edward Bromberg. Two grade A American newsreel cameramen get in the way, one falling for Hudson the other supplying the comedy. It takes a long time coming but the 2 Yanks escape an execution, Moto gets to show his incredible disguising (!) and energetic jujitsu skills off, and Hudson nearly got raped too (well, what was that about with the pervy High Priest if not?!) The High Priest/Temple scenes reminded me of George Zucco in The Mummy's Hand a few years later, another great film with a gossamer-like plot than smacked of Serial. Even so, there's a few surprises along the way, and the 61 minute running time simply flew by, because you see, I enjoy watching this type of movie: I can laugh at its many faults at the same time as revelling in its many good points.I only wish they had made this as a 13 part serial, there'd be so much more to enjoy.

The fourth in the series of Twentieth Century Fox films featuring Japanese detective Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) opens with jungle stock footage right before aviatrix Victoria Mason (Rochelle Hudson) sabotages her own airplane and parachutes to safety in the Cambodian wilds of Tong Moi. The logistics of that plane crash and her parachute landing practically right on top of Mr. Moto on an archaeological dig isn't very believable, but it does set up a fast paced adventure involving native revolutionaries and a secret munitions base. As in the first two Moto films, Lorre dons a disguise for part of the story, this time as an aged Hindu wise man. You know it's Lorre all the while, but it adds some melodrama to the occasion, and he does get to spout some appropriately sage advice to friends and foes alike.There's an early tribute to Lorre's brilliant portrayal in the 1931 Fritz Lang film 'M'. As the two newsreel reporters continue on their way following the first encounter with Moto, Marty Weston (Robert Kent) comments to partner Chick Davis (Chick Chandler) - "If I was casting a horror picture, I'd have him play the murderer".If you pay attention the first time Moto reaches for a carrier pigeon to relay a message to his government contact, you'll note that the cage door is already open. Makes you wonder why the pigeon stayed put! J. Edward Bromberg adds to the colorful proceedings as Rajah Ali, walking a fine line between Bokor's (George Regas) native upstarts and his French government superiors. This time around, in addition to Moto's clever detective work and martial arts skill, he also shows he can be deadly with a machine gun. Unlike his Oriental counterparts Charlie Chan and Mr. Wong, Moto can mix it up pretty well with the bad guys, and leaves a trail of dead bodies in his wake that would make Dirty Harry proud.All in all, an offbeat and different kind of mystery for Mr. Moto, reminiscent somewhat of the much later Charlie Chan film, 1948's "The Feathered Serpent" which takes place in an Aztec jungle setting. In that one, Roland Winters portrays Chan, and scurries around the steamy wilderness in the trademark white suit, tie and top hat. At least Moto looked more comfortable in a safari suit.Oh, and lest I forget, let me get my vote in now for Rochelle Hudson, the actress with the sexiest shoulder of the 1930's!