***SPOILERS*** Very probably the very first serious movie coming out of Hollywood about illegal drugs and how their being being smuggled into the USA has Dick Powell as FBN, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Agent Michael Borrows going as the movies title suggests to the ends of the earth to stop a boat load of opium from being smuggled into New York Harbor. It's Agent Borrows shock of seeing some 100 Chinese coolies thrown overboard off the Japanese freighter Kira Maru that sent him on his course of stopping the opium shipment that the ship was involved with from being successful even at the cost of his own life!
Traveling to far off Shanghai then Cairo as well as the Middle East, Palestine Lebanon and Syria, Agent Barrow finally got some results in pre-Castro Havana Cuba where the shipment of illegal Opium was on it's last leg on its voyage to New York City. While tracking the drugs down Agent Borrows got involved with Ann Grant, Signe Hasso, and her ward of the state pretty Chinese teenager Sho Pan Wu, Maylia, who's parents were killed in China in a Japanese bombing raid on their village. It's Ann that Agent Borrows is a bit suspicious of in that she's not straight with him about what she's doing Shanghai China and the mysterious circumstances of her husbands, an irrigation engineer, death!
It later comes out that Mr.Grant was involved in the planting and hiding, under a bed of roses, a field of poppies, the plant that Opium comes from, in Southern Egypt! This is later confirmed by the Egyptian owner of the "rose garden" Binda Sha, Fritz Libner, who when exposed killed himself by jumping off a cliff! The movie finally gets to the point to how the Opium was processed and hidden in the ships, docked in Havana Harbor, kitchen that's to be secretly smuggled into New York City under the cover of darkness or for a better word garbage!
***SPOILERS*** It's by then that Agent Borrows gets a bead to who's the big boss of the drug smuggling operation. Not really knowing that Agent Borrors is on to him or her the drug kingpin drops his guard which gives Borrows the chance to get the jump on him and his drug smuggling, who by then were almost all dead or behind bars, colleagues! The final few tense filled minutes of the movie has Agent Borrows take a chance in letting the head of the drug smuggling operation take a shot on him just to prove that he's the one in charge! It took nerves of steel on Agent Borrows part but it worked to the shock, in finding out who the head man was, of everybody watching as well as in the cast the movie!
P.S There's also in "To The Ends of the Earth" in a number of newsreel clips the head of the FBN Harry J. Anslinger who together with the assistance of his crime fighting government agency made the making of the movie possible.
Traveling to far off Shanghai then Cairo as well as the Middle East, Palestine Lebanon and Syria, Agent Barrow finally got some results in pre-Castro Havana Cuba where the shipment of illegal Opium was on it's last leg on its voyage to New York City. While tracking the drugs down Agent Borrows got involved with Ann Grant, Signe Hasso, and her ward of the state pretty Chinese teenager Sho Pan Wu, Maylia, who's parents were killed in China in a Japanese bombing raid on their village. It's Ann that Agent Borrows is a bit suspicious of in that she's not straight with him about what she's doing Shanghai China and the mysterious circumstances of her husbands, an irrigation engineer, death!
It later comes out that Mr.Grant was involved in the planting and hiding, under a bed of roses, a field of poppies, the plant that Opium comes from, in Southern Egypt! This is later confirmed by the Egyptian owner of the "rose garden" Binda Sha, Fritz Libner, who when exposed killed himself by jumping off a cliff! The movie finally gets to the point to how the Opium was processed and hidden in the ships, docked in Havana Harbor, kitchen that's to be secretly smuggled into New York City under the cover of darkness or for a better word garbage!
***SPOILERS*** It's by then that Agent Borrows gets a bead to who's the big boss of the drug smuggling operation. Not really knowing that Agent Borrors is on to him or her the drug kingpin drops his guard which gives Borrows the chance to get the jump on him and his drug smuggling, who by then were almost all dead or behind bars, colleagues! The final few tense filled minutes of the movie has Agent Borrows take a chance in letting the head of the drug smuggling operation take a shot on him just to prove that he's the one in charge! It took nerves of steel on Agent Borrows part but it worked to the shock, in finding out who the head man was, of everybody watching as well as in the cast the movie!
P.S There's also in "To The Ends of the Earth" in a number of newsreel clips the head of the FBN Harry J. Anslinger who together with the assistance of his crime fighting government agency made the making of the movie possible.