Peter Lorre Movies

Want to know the best Peter Lorre movies?  How about the worst Peter Lorre movies?  Curious about Peter Lorre box office grosses or which Peter Lorre movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which Peter Lorre movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

If there was a Mount Rushmore of great classic movie character actors…joining Walter Brennan, Lionel Barrymore and Claude Rains would be Peter Lorre (1904-1964).   Lorre was a Hungarian-American actor whose career spanned over 35 years. Lorre’s  IMDb page shows 113 acting credits from 1929 – 1964. This page will take a statistical look at Peter Lorre movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.

Drivel part:  When looking at our Request Hotline page…two things stick out to us.  (1) Peter Lorre’s name has been on the list since our Hub Page days (that was in 2011) and (2) A Peter Lorre page has been requested by many different people….including numerous times by Steve Lensman.  Without a doubt Steve has been one of the most supportive people when it comes to our movie pages….so you would think we would make sure to knock out his request quickly.  Well finally we have a Peter Lorre page.  Sorry it took so long Steve, Flora, Søren, Lyle & OU812.

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Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in 1942’s Casablanca

Peter Lorre Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.

Peter Lorre Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Peter Lorre movies by his co-star in the move
  • Sort Peter Lorre movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Peter Lorre movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Peter Lorre movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Peter Lorre movie received and many Oscar® wins for each Peter Lorre movie.
  • Sort Peter Lorre movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
  • If there is a link in the co-star column….that link takes you to that performers’ UMR movie page

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Peter Lorre Table

  1. Seventeen Peter Lorre movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 30.35% of his movies listed. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) was his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
  2. An average Peter Lorre movie grosses $85.60 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  44 Peter Lorre movies are rated as good movies…or 78.57% of their movies. Casablanca (1942) is his highest rated movie while The Story of Mankind (1957) was his lowest rated movie.
  4. Seven Peter Lorre movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 12.50% of his movies.
  5. Two Peter Lorre movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 3.57% of his movies.
  6. A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking  (UMR) Score is 60.00.  38 Peter Lorre movies scored higher than that average….or 67.85% of his movies. Casablanca (1942) got the highest UMR Score while The Story of Mankind (1957) got the lowest UMR Score.
Peter Lorre in 1954's 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
Peter Lorre in 1954’s 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
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22 thoughts on “Peter Lorre Movies”

  1. Peter Lorre, is the # 2 most connected actor of the 1930’s, the # 28 most connected of the 1940’s, and the # 74 most connected of the 1950’s (3 decades).

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  2. The Hollywood gangster cycle’s hey day was probably the 1930s and its most prolific top stars were Robinson, Cagney and Raft. However when the 1940s dawned those actors were to some extent “old hat” and audiences wanted a new “wartime” screen hero so they turned to Bogie, especially after Casablanca, who had been in the shadow of the main stars throughout the gangster era but who seemed to 1940s moviegoers as “the guy who could take on Hitler,” as one film historian put it.

    Peter Lorre had starred in the Mr Moto detective series on the big screen but nowadays many cinemagoers will probably remember him and Sydney Greenstreet for their own part in the Bogart cult as one or both pf them appeared with Bogie in several of his classics – Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, All Thru the Night, Passage to Marseilles, Across the Pacific and Conflict.

    However film historians often remind us that even before the Moto/Bogie days Peter’s performance as the serial child killer in the 1931 M electrified audiences and the historians urge posterity not to forget that. The beauty of this site is that as far as it can it profiles a star’s career in its ENTIRETY and indeed makes M its 3rd highest reviewed movie with a magnificent 89% rating

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  3. HI STEVE [or Referee!]

    1 Of the Top 5 selected by Bruce and you only M had Lorre in a starring role but I think in his case that was unavoidable as in most of his big prestige movie he wasn’t the main star and as some of his best supporting roles were in the classics Casablanca/Maltese Falcon it would have been silly not to have included them in the Top 5.

    2 Also you have counter-balanced that by including all the Moto movies in which he was the star. Indeed where an actor is closely associated with a successful series of movies I think there is a case for including all of them even at the expense of a few higher rated movies. That way the viewer is able to compare and contrast the ranking of every one of the movies in the series.

    3 So as I’ve said I was well pleased with the comprehensive coverage in your video and I liked too Bruce’s coverage of Lorre’s stats when they first appeared. However I remember years ago submitting a report to my Boss in which I gave credit to a colleague which my Boss thought was unwarranted and I feel like sending a post to Bruce which paraphrases my boss’s comments to me at that time. Therefore I might say to Bruce “What’s the big deal about this twit Lensman?”

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  4. 1 STEVE I mentioned previously that apparently towards the end of his career Lorre had become disenchanted with Hollywood because he regarded many of his fellow movie makers as immature and he gave as an example “endless childish arguments over billing.” However although he was a top billed star on a number of occasions especially in the very early days as your posters demonstrate, Peter never achieved serious stardom so the matter may not have been as important to him as it was to the big guns like Tracy and Crawford and to many others if Peter is to be believed though I suspect the very top guys & gals didn’t need to do too much arguing whereas I think Bruce rightly defines Peter as a character actor.with Wikipedia describing him as a “featured” player

    2 You have given us a fine run of Mr Moto posters in which Peter was undoubtedly THE star but your ratings of their quality whilst not bad [63-68% range] are mostly so-so which I think is to be expected in relation to a repetitive B movies series. Away from Moto for me the standout posters were Three Strangers, Beast with Five Fingers,Silk Stockings The Man who Knew Too Much, Arsenic and Old Lace and the saucy one from My Favourite Brunette . Excellent stills were the ones of Lorre/Price and the cats, the same duo in The Raven, The Maltese Falcon ensemble and the rather startling and creepy ones from M and especially Mad Love . For the second time in recent days you and Bruce are agreed on the entire Top 5 albeit again in a slightly different order. Surprisingly Bruce gave one Mr Moto flick, Thank You Mr Moto, an over 70% rating and I liked Bruce’s little ‘dickie bow’ miniature of Lorre. Overall your presentation was very comprehensive in relation to a performer who was always going to be a supporting actor if any other big star such as Bogie, Grant or even a Mickey Rooney past his best day was in the movie and this video in my opinion merits a 9.5/10 Take a well-deserved bow!. I see that Bruce mentions you in his write-up above -“Top billing at last.!”

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, trivia, comparison and observation, always appreciated.

      Despite never being a big movie star or pin up material for the ladies, I think Lorre deserves the attention Bruce and I have given him on page and video. He was such a distinctive personality with those bulging eyes and softly sinister voice. One of the great character (there’s that word again) actors of Hollywoods golden years.

      I could have nudged The Maltese Falcon into 2nd place but I thought Fritz Lang’s M is such a highly revered movie among film buffs that I could be forgiven for placing it above Huston’s film noir masterpiece. M did score higher, but only just.

      Five Peter Lorre films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Arsenic and Old Lace, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Maltin is a huge fan), Maltese Falcon, M and Casablanca.

      The only other movie to come close to them is Mad Love, which features a really creepy performance by Lorre.

      I wanted to feature all eight Mr. Moto movies starring Lorre, which meant the top 30 became a top 33. They are all pretty similar in tone and quality and worth a look if you want to see Lorre as a Japanese secret agent karate chopping and judo flipping people across the room, decades before that sort of thing became popular.

      Reply

    2. Hey Bob….glad you like the bow tie photo…yep Steve got lots of kudos at the top of the page. Good review on Steve’s latest video.

      Reply

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