el Cambion Watched three Mr. Moto movies: One was "The Mysterious Mr. Moto". The 2ns one was, I think, "Mr. Moto's Last Warning".Maybe the best of the three was this one, "Mr. Moto in Danger Island: (1939) Danger Island is apparently Puerto RicoMr. Moto (Peter Lorre). Geez, I thought it would never end. But still, in this series, if you're a Lorre fan (I am)… I give it a "6". Not as high as others rated it.Mr. Moto picks up a sidekick, a wrestler named Twister Mcgirk, when he goes to Puerto Rico to investigate diamond smuggling and a missing investigator. (I didn't know diamond mines were big in Puerto Rico but that is explained). Twister's grammar makes Slip Mahoney (Bowery Boys) sound like Laurence Olivier.I saw Ward Bond among the wrestlers but he wasn't in the credits.I've been to Puerto Rico; I didn't see any swamps or quicksand but… okay. Maybe I missed it. All I saw was luxury hotels and beautiful beaches. Oh, and I didn't see any Puerto Ricans in this movie.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Mr. Moto, Peter Lorre, is sent to the island of Puerto Rico to check out a diamond smuggling ring that's responsible for the murder of a Government Agent, Rodney Graham, who had infiltrated it. Faking an appendicitis attack Mr. Moto and his good friend and bodyguard, as if he needs one, professional wrestler Twister McGurk, Warren Hymen, is kidnapped by the smugglers on his way to the hospital only to lead the local police straight to them. In what was a wild brawl the leader of the group Capt.Dahlen, Eddie Marr, escaped to the Puerto Ricen swamps where his smugging operation originates from. Now again faking that he in fact is not Mr. Motto Mister Motto gets himself, together with Twister McGurk, recruited into the diamond smuggling ring using the allies of wanted and on the lamb hood Yoko Simura.Not one of the better Mr. Moto movies with the fearless and martial arts expert Mr. Motto getting his nice clean and pressed white suit and pants wet and dirtied with mud in the swamps where the diamond smugglers are operating out of. It takes a while for Mr. Moto to find out who's really behind this diamond smuggling ring that has already murdered two people including the Governor of the Island John Bentley, Paul Harvey, who had uncovered his identity. It's when Capt. Dahlen is caught in his attempted escape,on a motor boat, from the law that Mr. Moto devises a fool proof plan to get the head of this diamond smuggling ring to come out in the open. That in him trying to murder the seriously injured Capt. Dahlen before he comes out of his coma and talks to the police!***SPOILERS**** As the saying goes "Dead Men Tell No Tales" and that also goes for Capt. Dahlen. He was dead all the time but the clever Mr. Moto kept that from the person who was to eventually "murder" him to keep him from talking. A neat trick on Mr. Moto's part in having him expose himself by killing Capt. Dahlen a second time, he in fact died in a shoot out with the police on the high seas, in him not knowing that he was dead already!

bkoganbing Now I realize that the Mr. Moto features were B pictures from 20th Century Fox and I have a low bar set for them accordingly, but you would think that a film set in Puerto Rico would have at least one person of Latino background as a character. Even a small scene where Peter Lorre goes to a library to do research the librarian could have been a librarian from Kankakee, Illinois. Darryl F. Zanuck should have been more alert here.With that the film does sink to below average in ratings. As for the plot itself, Mr. Moto On Danger Island finds the intrepid Japanese sleuth hired by a consortium of diamond merchants to put a stop as to his smuggling the gems from Puerto Rico. It's important enough so that the territorial governor of Puerto Rico, Paul Harvey is in on it and is giving him full cooperation. Not that it does Harvey much good, because Harvey winds up a homicide victim and Colonel Richard Lane of the army who had been investigating the situation previously winds up with the blame and the suspicion of being the man in charge of the smuggling.Such folks as Robert Lowery, Leon Ames, Douglass Dumbrille and Jean Hersholt are in the cast, any one of them a likely villain. And for comic relief the intellectually challenged Warren Hymer is along as a professional wrestler who strikes up the acquaintance of Peter Lorre while on the boat bound for Puerto Rico and attaches himself to Lorre.Fans of the series will like this, but I fear few others.

classicsoncall Another entry in the late 1930's Mr. Moto series from Twentieth Century Fox, this one finds the Japanese sleuth in an adventure on the island of Puerto Rico. As in the first film, "Think Fast, Mr. Moto", the plot involves a diamond smuggling operation, and it too involves transport of the gems via cruise ships, however most of Mr. Moto's (Peter Lorre) investigation takes place on dry land.One of the things I liked about the early Charlie Chan movies from Fox were the references often made to events in a prior picture. In this story, Moto allows himself to be mistaken for a Japanese outlaw named Shimura. When Commissioner Gordon (Richard Lane) converses with a government official in the U.S., he learns that Moto will use any ruse as part of his investigation, learning of the escape from a Devil's Island prison camp in the prior movie, "Mysterious Mr. Moto". It's those little insertions that make the Oriental Detective movies so much fun for me.As in all the Moto films, this one features the sleuth in various martial arts scenes, but with a noticeable difference. In all the prior stories, the fights were almost always staged in very dim, even dark locations. The ones on display here are done in broad daylight, but even so, it's impossible to detect the stunt man (Harvey Parry) responsible for the flips and throws. Speaking of which, even Douglas Dumbrille's character La Costa manages to get a round house kick in on Moto's sidekick in the film, wrestler Twister McGurk (Warren Hymer). Twister becomes Moto's shadow for virtually the entire picture, thanks in part to Moto's distraction of opponent Sailor Sam in the film's opening sequence. Anyone else do a double take to see Ward Bond in that role?Keep an eye on the scenes involving Moto's second trip into the swamp in the latter half of the film. The lower half of Mr. Moto's pants are alternately muddy and clean in scenes that take place at the villains' camp.Some viewers may find the later pictures in the Moto series to be inferior to the early ones, but I have to say that this one was as entertaining to me as the ones that went before. By now one has a pretty good sense of how Moto operates, solving the crime via a series of masquerades, martial arts and clever analysis. The addition of some comic relief to this film by way of Twister's malapropisms was just the right touch to keep things moving along briskly.