Dorathen Better Late Then Never

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

gavin6942 Disguised as a German archaeologist, Moto (Peter Lorre) helps unearth the priceless crown of the legendary Queen of Sheba and sans disguise defends it from a variety of thugs and criminals.Plenty of good fights, an excellent plot, and the beard... man, what a beard. Lorre should have had a beard in more of his films.At this point, the Moto series was winding down, Lorre was getting sick of doing them, and it would not be the least surprising if director Norman Foster was ready to move on, too. At least they had one thing going for them in this installment: Lionel Atwill, an actor probably best known for his 1930s horror films.

utgard14 Mr. Moto takes on a mysterious jewel thief known as Metaxa out to steal the recently-unearthed Crown of Sheba. This last Peter Lorre Mr. Moto movie starts out fun but then unwanted comic relief George P. Huntley shows up. Huntley as Archie Featherstone ranks among the worst examples of forced comedy I've ever seen. Why they felt they needed to ruin an otherwise enjoyable Mr. Moto movie with this idiot is beyond me. He even appears in blackface at one point! To make matters worse, he teams with racist caricaturist Willie Best not long after.A good supporting cast including Lionel Atwill, Joseph Schildkraut, and pretty Virginia Field can only do so much. The writing is pretty thin, as well. They even reuse a bit from the previous Moto film, Mr. Moto in Danger Island. In that one, Moto (faking appendicitis) arrives by ship and is picked up by an ambulance. After the ambulance departs, two men come rushing up in a cab exclaiming that they are the real ambulance drivers and the two men with Moto are imposters. Well a very similar bit is used here, except instead of an ambulance it's an armored truck with two imposter drivers.It's not surprising this is the end of the Moto series. The U.S. would be at war with Japan in a couple of years so it would have been impossible for Fox to continue making movies with a Japanese hero. Besides, if this is an example of where the series was headed it's better they stopped here. It was a decent series with Peter Lorre always giving a good performance even when the material didn't deserve it. This one's probably the worst of the lot but still watchable. When Huntley's not around, it's actually entertaining.

Michael_Elliott Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) ** (out of 4) Eighth and final entry in Fox's original series once again finds Peter Lorre in the role of Mr. Moto. This time he must fight off countless bad guys who are trying to steal a priceless crowd previously owned by the Queen of Sheba. This final entry isn't the weakest of the series but it might be the most disappointing. I was highly disappointed in this one because it features a pretty good cast but there's really nothing that works overly well here. The movie certainly a long way from being bad but at the same time there's just not enough good stuff here to make the film worth viewing. The actual story is a fairly interesting set up but not enough is done with it as we pretty much get cardboard bad guys popping up at various spots and doing something bad. There's really no heart or soul behind any of the writing and in the end the movie just comes off as a low grade "B" movie rather than something unique like a lot of the films in this series. Lorre finds himself giving another good performance and we've also got decent work by Joseph Schildkraut, Virginia Field and Lionel Atwill. Atwill is pretty much wasted in the film but it's always nice seeing him. G.P. Huntley plays the comic relief here and his awful character really brings the film down several notches. I'm not sure who the director thought would find this performance funny. Black character actor Willie Best also appears briefly. Fans of the series will certainly want to check this one out but it's doubtful many others will find any type of entertainment here.

gazzo-2 ...but jest barely. It's nothing great, the final Heave of a series getting the heave Ho by the studio, cast, writers, etc. Nonsense about Cleopatra, Jewels in London and the like. You can watch this and enjoy it-but don't be fooled-this wasn't going anywheres.Peter Lorre while making the best of the situation and the role, knew that he was fast becoming typecast as the little Japanese, inscrutable Karate-chopping detective, and therefore made a point of getting away from it.Plus you knew w/ the War coming on, he wasn't gonna stick to it.** outta ****