The best thing about this film is not the excellent performances of Peter Lorre as a double agent in many shapes, George Sanders as a typically suave villain, Robert Coote in his first great role as a whimsy Englishman getting into constant trouble but always getting out of it, nor Ricardo Cortez showing off as a ventriloquist with a dummy who actually gets the last word, no, the most valuable ingredient of this film is the wonderful interior shots of a Variety or Cabaret in old Port Said before the war, and all the scenes from this establishment and old Cairo with its drunken sailors and sultry pubs with women on the loose is the real gem of this film, and even Hitchcock would have loved it - moods and atmospheric interiors like this was always to his liking, and although this thriller is not up to Hitchcock standard, the jokes of it certainly are. This is most enjoyable from beginning to end, and only John Carradine has to pay too high a price for it. I have never seen him as a British spy before. And yet another ace of the deck is the general, a very typical such, played by a certain E. E. Clive - the whole show is just gorgeous.