After saying goodbye to Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto over 25 yrs ago; are the Moto fans jaded or does this movie just suck? I side with the latter. The low budget is obvious, the story drags on and acting is atrocious. Henry Silva as Moto...unacceptable. Any attempt to have Silva appear oriental fails badly. Moto goes undercover as a Japanese oil businessman to find out who is setting fire to Middle Eastern oil wells and trying to garner valuable control of petroleum leases and future exports. The detective is aided by a pretty oil company secretary(Suzanne Lloyd)and police inspector Halliday(Stanley Morgan). The cast also features: Terence Longdon, Marne Maitland, Gordon Tanner and Martin Wyldeck.

The Return of Mr. Moto is a Mr. Moto film in name only. There's no resemblance between this movie and the wonderfully entertaining films that Peter Lorre made almost 30 years prior. To begin with, the plot of The Return of Mr. Moto is pretty much a muddled mess. It has something to do with sabotaged oil wells in the Middle East and a meeting of world leaders to discuss oil and oil contracts. But really, none of it mattered much to me as I lost interest after about 20 minutes. A well-written post-WWII, "modern" Moto film might have been fun, but this one fails miserably. In addition to the lifeless plot, the movie is saddled with cheap looking sets, a ridiculous plot device involving Moto in disguise (there's no way putting on glasses and a goatee would have fooled anyone), and some less than stellar acting on the part of many in the supporting cast. To sum it up, The Return of Mr. Moto is one sad, drab, lifeless affair.And what's with Henry Silva playing Moto? By 1965, surely they could've come up with someone of Japanese descent to play the character. Don't get me wrong, I like Silva. He made some really cool movies in the 70s – particularly some of his Italian films. But Silva as Moto? I'm sorry but he's about as Japanese as I am – and that's not at all.

One of the interesting things (looking back) about the original Mr. Moto series is its timing relative to WWII. It was also quite well written and, like many classics, provides some good commentary on society of that time. I think a post-WWII Moto film would be a good idea, but not this one. Poorly written and poorly acted, this film certainly does not do justice to a fine old classic. With the original Mr. Moto played by a German and Charlie Chan by a Swede, one would think that our enlightened 1960's society would at least come up with a proper Japanese-descent actor to play Moto. They certainly didn't pay a lot for the script and even less for sets. The feeble attempt with two folding screens and a cheap print of a Geisha on the Moto's wall didn't quite make us believe Moto's "orientalness". I hope someone takes another, better, stab at bringing back Mr. Moto.

The only film I've walked out from.