The Falcon Out West

Ranching Out

The Falcon Out West
USA 1943
Directed by William Clemens
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

The next in the series of The Falcon films, following The Falcon And The Co-Eds (reviewed here), starring Tom Conway as Tom Lawrence, sees the titular character, spreading his metaphorical wings and flying further afield, as the title suggests, in The Falcon Out West. And, once again, it’s very much a change of pace for the detective as he finds himself caught up in a plot which shifts to a standard Western movie, along with horse riding, gun play, cowboys and even a few Indians.

The Falcon attends a night club party, as an observer from another table, for a Texan who is due to be travelling back that night with his new fiance, who he plans to be marrying very soon. Tom Lawrence is there because the gentleman in question’s ex-wife suspects the new fiance is there purely for his money and not his heart. The Falcon declines the case until, before his and all the other guests’ very eyes, the Texan drops dead from a rattlesnake bite. Obviously, though, there are no rattlers to be found on site and things look fairly peculiar. The police, in the form of the series regulars Cliff Clark as Inspector Donovan and his flat foot sidekick Edward Gargan, playing Detective Bates, show up and start questioning people. While this is going on, The Falcon notices the fiance, played by Carole Gallagher, slipping away with one of the railway tickets... so he steals the other train ticket and travels back to the Texan’s ranch with her. When they get there the next day, her lawyer plus Donovan and Bates turn up and... all five of them take a coach to her ranch to stay, while they find out what’s at the bottom of the murder.

The stage goes out of control when a few shots are fired at it but they are saved by another of the female leads, played by Barbara Hale doing her best Roy Rogers impression. There’s another murder, a warning to The Falcon in the form of a death threat scalp held in place on his door with an evil looking blade, horse chases, attempts on various people’s lives and, much as I’d suspected, a special ring with two retractable snake fangs which hold enough venom for three. It’s  the usual shenanigans, which are always usually good enough, spiced up with cowboys and cowgirls and a nice ending where it turns out the very first person suspected by the police is actually the real culprit after all.

Points of interest might include a nice line of dialogue when someone is described as a good driver of the out of control stagecoach, when The Falcon quips that they’re from “the Ben Hur school of driving.” Of course this was in reference to the famous chariot race in Ben Hur but, at the time this film was made, which predates the famous Charlton Heston version by some years, the most recent version was the silent version from 18 years before this film (which I reviewed here)... so it’s interesting that this particular version was still very much in the public consciousness  and that the writers could get away with writing throwaway one liners about it like this.

Since the whole story is set, for the most part (barring the odd chase scene or two and the opening sequence), on two ranches... and since the police have travelled down to be on the scene... Clark and Gargan have much more to do here than they do in their usual Falcon series appearances, although their regular running comical joke, sadly doesn’t make a reappearance here. Alas, this was to be the last appearance of these two characters, who bow out of the series at this point. I can’t remember back to the last time I watched these (in the early 1980s) as to whether they were replaced by regular characters or different equivalents in each film but there were five more of these films after this one so, I’ll let you know.

In the last review, for The Falcon And The Co-Eds, I mentioned that the regular feature of The Falcon being called to another case might actually get a follow through on this movie. I was basing that on what I read on the IMDB and, once again, the IMDB totally let me down. It doesn’t follow the last one at all. This one has another ending which sees The Falcon taking a train to Havana at the urge of another young lady. Well, I’m guessing it won’t tie up with the next film in the series either, which is called The Falcon In Mexico but, well, I’ll just have to wait and see. The Falcon Out West is another fine film in the series but I wouldn’t call this one a jumping on point in any way because, well, it’s not the lead’s usual setting and so has a slightly different flavour than the regular capers. It’s also not nearly as entertaining as the previous film but, still, an enjoyable watch and I’m looking forward to where they go next.

The Falcon And The Co-Eds

Educating Danger

The Falcon
And The Co-Eds
USA 1943
Directed by William Clemens
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

And so onto the next in the popular series of films based on The Falcon character of the 1940s, The Falcon And The Co-Eds. This one has a kind of different atmosphere to the preceding films but then, the series does seem to keep reinventing itself in both big and small ways as it progresses. For instance, Tom Lawrence has no real assistants in the mystery solving department in this one and not much in the way of romantic interest either (not a single fiancé in sight and I think the young ladies in the film, who are college students at Bluecliff Seminary, are supposed to be slightly underage for anything intimate for the most part but, again for the most part, I would say the actresses playing them are not).

Now, I had no idea what a co-ed is because we don’t have the term in England but, apparently it’s some sort of slang for a woman studying at a mixed boys/girls school or, as in this case, college. I’ve also still no idea why the term is applied in this title because, well... it’s an all female school (apart from one of the teachers... two if you count the first murder victim, who is dead before the story even starts) and so the term seems to be complete nonsense if you ask me. Still, it may mean something more to an American audience perhaps but... I’m not getting any help from the definitions found on the internet, it has to be said.

Okay, so Tom Lawrence, alias The Falcon (played once again by Tom Conway), is called in by the student daughter of a friend when it’s common knowledge, due to the psychic prophecies of one of the girls, Marguerita (played by Rita Corday), that one of the teachers has been murdered rather than, as one of the resident doctors who teaches psychology there has signed on the death certificate, suicide. In fact, Lawrence is pretty much compelled to be there, actually, when the gal steals his car to get him to the seminary to retrieve it. The so called suicide is hushed up because the head mistress doesn’t want to bring any hint of scandal to the college but, it’s not all that far into the proceedings before she herself is run through and killed with a fencing sword by a person unknown.

So The Falcon, posing as an insurance investigator, is roaming the campus trying to solve the mystery and, somehow, the police end up on the grounds pretty soon too. Actually, the two police who are the regular guys, Cliff Clark as Inspector Donovan and Edward Gargan as his sidekick Detective Bates, are pretty important here to help remind audiences that they are watching a Falcon film, in some ways because, as I said, this isn’t the usual milieu inhabited by the central character. I’m happy to say that the running joke dialogue between Donovan and Bates has been reinstated for this movie, after a curious absence from their regular repartee in the previous film.

Of course, there’s no question that The Falcon will eventually find the real culprit behind the murders but he comes to it pretty late and, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that the solution this time around wasn’t at all easy to work out. I only had my suspicions about the same time Lawrence figures it out near the end. I think part of the reason for this is that it's put together just like one of those typical Italian gialli films in terms of the amount of characters who could have done the deeds. There’s an abundance of suspects and, like a giallo, one of the prime ones is suddenly bumped off half way through the film, eliminating her from the long list of possible suspects.

It’s fast paced enough with some humorous dialogue and even some natty song and dance numbers thrown in. For some reason, because of the fact that some cliffs factor in to the story at some point, the director chooses to not only have the dreary credits sequence filled with a picture of the rolling waves of the nearby sea but also seems to use it at least four times throughout the film as some kind of transition shot... although it establishes really nothing in terms of connecting the scenes in any useful manner, it has to be said. Also, though it’s quite clear that much of the film is shot on location, including many of the cliff scenes, there are also some quite ham fisted examples of visual effects which do tend to get in the way of total immersion into the movie. Such as a few shots of Conway and some other actors walking along the cliff with it clearly being a back projection and the cast walking on a treadmill. Or some worse shots where two of the characters are clearly superimposed quite badly when standing on a cliff’s edge.

It’s also very much of its time too... as shown by a scene where The Falcon picks up one of the college girls (the actress was 20 at the time) and giving her ‘a good spanking’. Which is something that many young audiences watching these days would make a fuss about but, honestly, even in the 1970s when I first saw this film, it wasn’t really anything anybody would bat and eyelid at. So, yes, this film probably wouldn’t win any awards with the fashionably woke brigade but, The Falcon And The Co-Eds is still an enjoyable romp and, just a little bit different from the atmosphere of the preceding stories, as I said earlier. As usual, the film ends with the title character being cliff hangered onto another case and, I believe for once the dangling plot line left here as a punchline might actually get picked up in the next film in the series. So I’ll report back on that one when I revisit it again.

The Falcon In Danger

Falcon Your
Seatbelts

The Falcon In Danger
USA 1943
Directed by William Clemens
RKO/Warner Archive
DVD Region 1

Well now, this rushed out sequel, because The Falcon films were getting very popular, demonstrates just why that was the case. The Falcon In Danger, despite its somewhat blasé title, is definitely one of the best I’ve seen in the series. Once again we have Tom Conway, now established as the current incarnation of The Falcon, Tom Lawrence, after his fictional brother Guy Lawrence, star of the first four films as played by Conway’s real life brother George Sanders, had died at the end of the fourth film in the series (The Falcon’s Brother, reviewed here). Conway had obviously proved he could carry The Falcon pictures on his own with the success of the previous entry in the series The Falcon Strikes Back (reviewed here) and he certainly has a charm about him and way of playing the character which is close enough to Sander’s characterisation so that you don’t really miss Sanders in the role.

He’s joined once again by Police Chief Donovan, played by Cliff Clark and his sidekick Detective Bates, played by Edward Gargan). These two, however, are behaving a little differently than they normally present themselves. For one thing, the running gag about Clark having to remind Gargan of his character’s authority every time he tells him to do something is not present in this movie. Secondly, The Falcon is never a suspect in their investigation and doesn’t get arrested once... which I think is the first time this happens in the franchise, if memory serves.

There’s also an interesting addition and subtraction with the dynamic of the way The Falcon’s main character is aided and abetted in this one. So we have an additional character called Bonnie, played by Amelita Ward, who is Tom Lawrence’s jealous Texan fiance in this. She fulfils exactly the same role as Wendy Barrie did in the first couple of the George Sanders Falcon films and, for the most part, just gets under his feet and tries to steer him clear of an unusually large amount of female characters in this one. However, what we don’t have here is any kind of male sidekick for The Falcon. No Goldy or Goldy substitute here... it’s just Tom Lawrence operating on his own and, frankly, the film is none the worse for it.

It’s also got a strong start to this mystery, with an airport scene as a plane everyone is expecting to land, instead crashes at the airport. When the plane (minus a wing from the crash) is boarded, there’s nobody on board it at all... not even a pilot. It doesnt take long for The Falcon to be embroiled in a plot involving two missing industrialists, a missing $100,000, the daughter and sister in law of one of the missing people and an assortment of interested parties. The mystery of the film is offset by the return of one of the industrialists about a third of the way through but, it also further complicates things although, I have to say, I was pretty sure I knew who the real villain of the piece was by about two thirds of the way through and, yeah, it was a fairly easy one to solve but that didn’t make getting to the conclusion any less enthralling or entertaining.

The dialogue is fairly quick fire and everything makes sense. They really don’t often make movies which sing themselves off the page in such a soluble pill these days (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphors) and it’s a real pleasure to watch. Of course, because it’s shot in 1943, there are a few references to the war in this one, including a neat trick where The Falcon covertly operates the neon sign in the front of an antique shop during a blackout in order to bring the police there and get himself out of trouble. There’s also a scene near the start of the picture where a gambling joint is also raided but quick steps are put into operation to hide the evidence of what’s really going in there from the police and... I couldn’t quite work out what the police would be doing raiding a gambling joint, to be honest. It’s not like it was a ‘speakeasy’ from 20 years before so... maybe gambling wasn’t allowed during the war, I don’t know. If you’re old or knowledgable enough to know the answer to that question then please leave a comment at the bottom of the page and enlighten me.

If I had one criticism of this one, it’s that there were far too many female characters for me to keep track of, especially when a lot of them looked quite similar. I gave up on that angle about half way through the film. Interestingly enough though, at the end of the picture, Lawrence manages to revert to trickery and get his fiancé to ditch him so... I’m not sure what the set up will be for the next film in the series but, obviously, I’ll report accordingly in my next Falcon review. In the meantime though, I’d have to say that The Falcon In Danger is easily one of the more entertaining installments in the series and would definitely recommend this one to lovers of the detective fiction genre. I’m looking forward to revisiting the next one of these soon.

The Falcon Strikes Back

She Done Him Bond

The Falcon Strikes Back
USA 1943
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
RKO/Warner Archive
DVD Region 1

Warning: Some big spoilers.

It was all change over at RKO for The Falcon series with The Falcon Strikes Back, which was managing to not only keep going but flourish after George Sanders had left the franchise. If you’ll remember, Sanders had relinquished the role in the previous film, The Falcon’s Brother (reviewed here) when his real life brother, Tom Conway, came to help out as The Falcon’s brother, Tom Lawrence. The Falcon was shot dead in an act of heroic self sacrifice in the final minutes of that last movie and his brother became the new Falcon.

Interestingly, two of the actors who were in the last film, including The Falcon’s regular sidekick from the previous movies, were not retained for the next adventure. However, in a bizarre choice, the studio decided that the characters themselves would keep going with different actors. Personally, since The Falcon is not the same character as his dead brother, they could have changed the characters too but... well, anyway, long standing sidekick character Goldie is now played by Cliff Edwards and the oriental houseboy, played by the famous Keye Luke in The Falcon’s Brother, is now played by Richard Loo.

To give the series some kind of continuity from the last one, in Conway’s first solo Falcon movie, we have Jane Randolph reprising her role as Marcia Brooks, the reporter from the previous film. We also have Inspector Donovan played once again played by Cliff Clark in his second Falcon movie (contrary to what the IMDB might tell you... they really need some fact checkers there) and Edward Gargan playing the Inspector’s sidekick, the fifth time so far in the series that he has played the ‘dumb detective’ role.

Although the Nazi lead in from the ending of the previous film is totally ignored... it seems to be a thing now where a new adventure is teased at the end and then completely ignored in the next movie (including the ending of this one)... it still has a plot lightly dealing with the subject of the Second World War, which was now playing out in the US as an ever present worry. This time around The Falcon is knocked unconscious and framed for the theft of a huge sum of War Bonds (just what he would do with them is not made clear). He escapes police custody and, with the aid of Goldie, his houseboy and the reporter, gets caught up in two completely different mysteries which converge at a hotel resort, a mystery involving both a ‘war bonds’ swindler named The Duchess and a murderer who is, actually, killing off the criminals with a gun rigged with a silencer (or suppressor if you like... I understand that these weren’t that good or useable at the time, or for many decades for that matter, if they ever were but, as usual, they work perfectly well in the movies).

It’s a pleasant romp of a mystery ticking all the right boxes and, like his brother, The Falcon only has to kiss an objecting woman for her to do an about face, swoon and then help him as much as she possibly can (ahh... those were the days). Now, I have to say that, back in the 1940s, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise as to who the murderer was in this film but I didn’t see it coming until about ten minutes before the reveal on this one. The reason is very simple... I’m not used to seeing the comedian Edgar Kennedy in diverse roles...

Edgar Kennedy was a comic whose theatrical comedy shorts I used to watch on TV in repeats during the 1970s as a kid. I was also used to him from numerous appearances in Laurel And Hardy shorts and, later on, when I saw him opposite The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. However, I think in the 1940s, audiences would have been more used to him indulging in straighter, more sinister roles than I’ve ever seen him in and so, they would have had the advantage over me I think. So it came as a surprise, somewhat, when I figured out he was pretty much the only other person the killer could be by the end of the movie. He even falls to his death from a rooftop, being chased by The Falcon at the end.

There are a couple of other things in this movie which I think are worthy of note. One is that, at the start of the film, the sound of accompanying imagery such as speeding trains, ships, a pneumatic drill and a large hammer on a building site, are used as a visual metaphor to explain the state of The Falcon’s hangover as he is trying to sleep it off, in his introductory scene at the start of the picture. Which is a nice touch.

The other thing is when Edgar Kennedy, who is a puppeteer (using the credited ‘Velma Dawson Puppets’), brings in a puppet of Goofy and does an impersonation of him. The first thing I thought of when I saw this was... copyright and legal suit coming the way of RKO studios, surely? However, further research shows that Walt Disney was indeed still releasing films through RKO at the time, so I can only assume that this was above board (or RKO would have been in a lot of trouble, I guess).

And that’s that. The series was continuing to be popular and Conway would go on to portray The Falcon (or rather his brother) for another eight movies after The Falcon Strikes Back... all of which I hope to review for this blog soonest.

The Falcon's Brother

Birds Of A Feather

The Falcon's Brother
USA 1942
Directed by Stanley Logan
RKO/Warner Archive
DVD Region 1

Warning: Big spoilers!

Even though I remembered almost nothing about The Falcon's Brother (it turns out), this one made a bit of an impression of me when I first saw it on television on BBC 2 in my early teens, back in the early 1980s. Apparently it made a big impression on the box office figures too, ensuring the series of Falcon movies, based on the character by Michael Arlen, would continue to run for a while. I’ve been trying to find a trailer online for this movie to see if the audiences had any inkling of what was going to hit them in this one but I couldn’t find anything. However, I’m pretty sure that they probably didn’t see this one coming when it came out the gate running.

So the film starts off with George Sanders in his, by now, established role as Gay Lawrence, aka The Falcon. But that’s almost the only thing which has stuck from the previous three films. Everything is different. For starters, he has a new sidekick in this one. Filling in for the previous guy, we have Don Barclay as Lefty, a very short guy but basically he’s the same character in tone and dialogue as Goldy from the previous films. He also has the legendary Keye Luke as his housekeeper, who does a nice bit where, if anyone calls who he thinks The Falcon doesn’t want to talk to, he switches into ‘velly solly’ pigeon English before, once the phone is hung up, switching back to fluent English American. There’s even a nice, oblique reference in the script to his ‘number one son’ status in the Charlie Chan films.

Second big change is, The Falcon has no fiance in this one. Wendy Barrie is nowhere in sight and is not mentioned. There’s absolutely no girlfriend in this at all although, somehow, the fashion reporter in this, played by Jane Randolph, is still serving as the person who is jealous of the main character’s flirtations with the opposite sex. Except, well, after 20 mins or so, The Falcon is not the main protagonist of the movie.

Thirdly, although Edward Gargan is still in place as the Chief Inspector’s sidekick, the inspector is a different character and actor... Cliff Clark as Inspector Donovan. That being said, he serves exactly the same purpose as the previous Inspector from the first three movies and the two characters even have the same pattern of dialogue exchanges, where Clark will give an order, Gargan will question it and then Clark will remind him he’s the Inspector.

Fourthly, the film is no longer under the musical helm of Paul Sawtell like the previous three but, instead, it’s Roy Webb on scoring duties (who had provided music for some of The Saint movies and also, of course, Cat People... in which Tom Conway has a role... more from Conway in a minute).

And this film covers a lot of bases for what is the 1942 equivalent of a ‘pass the torch’ movie at just a few minutes over an hour long. The film starts off with George Sanders meeting his brother on a ship which has just arrived in town. Except, when he arrives the police are already investigating the apparent suicide of his brother. Spoiler warning... it’s a) not a suicide and b) not actually The Falcon’s brother Tom Lawrence, although Gay Lawrence does nothing to contradict the notion of the police that the corpse is his relation.

Then, a little later while investigating the incident himself, he becomes embroiled in more murder and, just when he meets his brother, played by George Sander’s real life brother Tom Conway, he gets run over by a car and effectively rendered unconscious for most of the rest of the film. Sanders is excellent in this and spends the first 20 minutes or so chasing after women while attempting to solve the crime in the most comical manner possible. However, once unconscious it’s up to his brother Tom (the name of his real brother and, of course, the name of his character’s brother) to pick up where he left off and solve the plot.

This is 1942 and there are a few reminders of the recent US intervention into the Second World War. There’s a comical ‘fake black out’ scene during the start, as Lefty tries to help Gay escape from being discovered by the police and then, when Tom Lawrence continues the investigation with Lefty himself, the whole thing becomes about a fashion photographer who is using the covers of a fashion magazine to send coded messages to nazi agents in the US, with the prime example being the discovery of a cover which ties into the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Okay, so this is where The Falcon's Brother picks up some bizarre synergy (as if the lead character’s brother being played by the actor’s real brother wasn’t enough). Gay Lawrence finally regains consciousness and joins in with the mystery about ten minutes before the end of the movie. While Tom is tied up by the nazi’s, he manages to ring the bell in the church tower from which a sniper is waiting to kill a very important political figure. Gay, alerted by the bell, figures out the warning and rushes to throw the VIP out of the path of the bullet... only to be killed by the sniper’s shot in his stead. So, yeah, the main hero of The Falcon movies was shot dead just before the end of the film because, frankly, George Sanders had already got tired of the role so he got his brother involved instead. Conway is good in this but, understandably, isn’t as polished as a lead in this one, sharing screen time with his brother.

Now, you might think that this would be the end of The Falcon series but, due to a scene at the end where the nazis warn Tom Lawrence to get out of town or the same thing which happened to his brother will happen to him... Lawrence decides to stay and become the new version of... you guessed it, The Falcon. And quite successfully too, as it turns out, because he would play that role for the final nine films in the series. Which I’ll hopefully get to very soon. If you keep reading, I’ll keep watching.