Fantastic Moto film which benefits from very exotic locations - it starts in the Gobi desert with someone trying to kill Moto in a tent, then spends the rest of its running time in Peking. The storyline is strikingly non-American - there is a male American "hero", played by Thomas Beck (who performed that function in the first film, though he's a different character here) but he could be completely cut out of the film and it wouldn't affect the story! There is an American girl, played by Jayne Regan, who does perform some plot function because the main baddy falls for her, causing the main baddy's (Sidney Blackmer's) love interest (Nedda Harrington) to get jealous. Other characters in it are Russians or Chinese.
The emotional heart of the film is the Chinese family who own Genghis Khan scrolls and are tempted to sell them - Philip Anh and Pauline Frederick (yes Frederick is in yellow face like Lorre which is unfortunate). Anh is tempted, Frederick is angry, she gets shot, Anh kills himself in shame, Lorre vows to avenge them, and does so, destroying the scrolls -it's good meaty dramatic stuff and quite unexpected.
John Carradine has a small but juicy role as an antiques dealer who gets shot.
2 comments:
I credit some of the unusual aspects of the script to co-screenwriter Willis Cooper, who later changed his name to Wyllis. He created radio's "Lights Out" and "Quiet Please" as well as being credited with the script for Hollywood's Son of Frankenstein. Cooper's "Quiet Please" radio plays were generally sensitive to "foreign" cultures and made a decent effort to humanize so-called ethnic characters.
Thanks for that - I'm not super familiar with Cooper. Appreciate it.
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