There were eight Mr. Moto films, starring Peter Lorre, a Hungarian who portrayed the Japanese Mr. Moto, and six of them were directed by Norman Foster, who was switching from acting -- he was superb in John Ford's Pilgrimage in 1933 -- to directing; he also was a co-writer of the screenplay for Think Fast, Mr. Moto. The film character was rather different than the one writer John P. Marquand had created (see my post of Nov. 14 2020). In this first film of the series Mr. Moto's character is rather ambiguous, even throwing a spy overboard on his trip by boat from San Francisco to China and using judo violently in his confrontations with the bad guys who are shipping drugs to the United States. The film is barely more than an hour long (fairly standard for a B film) but moves swiftly, with the help of a White Russian nightclub singer (she sings "I'm a Shy Violet") , played by Virginia Field, and Moto's Asian helper, played by Lela Liu. The crisp black-and-white cinematography is by veteran Harry Jackson and director Foster, who had spent much time abroad, created an effective Asian atmosphere on a small budget.
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