Favorite movie-quote - "Who ever heard of a crooked cop?"
To be perfectly honest, Peter Lorre is one of those actors who has always given me the creeps, big-time. To me, Lorre has the sort of "limited" screen persona that's clearly best suited for roles where the character is either seriously unhinged and/or operating from the wrong side of the law.
In his Mr. Moto role, Lorre was neither unhinged nor of a criminal mind. On the contrary, Mr. Moto was an exceptionally brilliant professor of criminology whose deductions and quick-mindedness were positively uncanny.
In fact, Mr. Moto's cool, collected and matter-of-fact demeanour was, at times, really too much to be believed (but, after all, this was just a movie), especially since it was Lorre who played the part.
Had the story-line of this lighthearted, 1938, Whodunnit not been about the world of professional boxing (and the criminal element that gets involved when big bucks are at stake), then I doubt that it would have held my interest as much as it inevitably did.
When it comes to the likes of pugs and palookas & chumps and champs, I really enjoy early-Hollywood boxing pictures where double-crosses, treachery and taking a dive are the name of the game.
Mind you, with that said, I think this film would've faired a helluva lot better had another actor, other than Lorre, been cast in the Mr. Moto role.
Anyways - I sure did like real-life professional boxer, Max Rosenbloom, in the part of the pickpocket, "Knockout" Wellington. And at a 72-minute running time, this strictly formulaic, little Murder/Mystery certainly did move along at a nice, brisk clip.
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