Endless Night

Fragment Rock

Endless Night
Directed by Sydney Gilliat
UK 1972
Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Endless Spoilers.

I almost didn’t bother writing a review for this one because, although I found the film entertaining, I also found it rather slight in substance. A conclusion which was obviously similar to UK audiences at the time, where it didn’t receive a great reception. Apparently it fared considerably better in Italy on its release. 

Based on a book by Agatha Christie, Endless Night is the last of three films made co-starring Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills, two of which, including this one (and the slightly better known Twisted Nerve) were scored by the late great Bernard Herrmann. And, as I say, it’s not got a lot going for it storywise... it tells the tale of Hywel Bennett’s young chauffer Michael who makes good by accidentally falling in love with and marrying the sixth richest young lady in the world, Ellie (played by Hailey Mills). An architect friend, Santomix, played by Per Oscarsson builds Michael’s dream home for them in Wales (with a location in the Isle Of Wight standing in for it) and things go alright for a while, apart from the inlaws and the former housekeeper who kind of moves in with them... Greta, played by Britt Ekland. Then things start to go wrong and Ellie is found dead under mysterious circumstances one day.

The whole thing is made slightly more interesting than it sounds by the use of a fragmentary structure and a slightly experimental playfulness with some of the editing and stock treatment. It’s told as a kind of fragmented flashback by Bennett’s character and various false starts and other narrative stammers are fought against and overcome to get his story out into the open. For instance, foreshadowing at the start of something revealed in more crucial detail from his childhood only at the end of the picture and an odd scene of repeat edits where he comes upon a faceless woman in a forest, rapidly repeated as a smooth camera movement three times, but treated slightly different on each stammer, with a different colour on each pass having, what looks like, a single colour missing from it... so green and red on one pass, blue and red on another and so forth. It’s quite striking but only lasts a few seconds. 

It’s filed with a whole host of wonderful supporting actors too... Peter Bowles, Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny herself), George Sanders (he killed himself a few months before the release of this film), Walter Gottell (who was in From Russia With Love and then as a regular reoccurring character in Roger Moore’s stint as James Bond) and even Windsor Davies. Plus, in a completely uncredited role, I spotted an auctioneer played by Nicholas Courteney (who was the long running character of the Brigadier in Doctor Who). 

Herrmann’s score is fine but it’s not what you’d be expecting for one of his thrillers, although it is appropriate to the movie. Although there are a few typical Herrmann moments of ‘fright’, using stabs of colour on a Moog synthesiser (Herrmann obviously thought the guy playing it did a good job because he let the musician share a credit on his card at the start of the movie... which I suspect he did because the producers wouldn’t give the musician his own credit and so offered space on his, like he did with the soloist on the film On Dangerous Ground... reviewed here), the score is much more in his lesser known romantic idiom, which aligns it much more closely to his scores for such films as The Ghost And Mrs. Muir than it does to any of his thriller scores. But it is good stuff, it has to be said.

The biggest problem with the film is that it telegraphs the killer from very early on. Hywel Bennett’s fragmented voice-over narrative really does point the finger very early on due as much to what is not said as much as what is initially seen. His general personality traits (and his relationship with his own mother) kind of flags his narrative as ‘not to be trusted’ and, I think without the framework that the director went with on this film, it would have been a far duller affair but with less chance of guessing the killer in the first five minutes, for sure. 

And that’s me done with Endless Night, I think... although I shall return to my CD of the score on occasion. Indicator do their usual nice job of including some extras, many of which on this Blu Ray focus on Bernard Herrmann... I haven’t explored those yet but I certainly intend to do so. 

The Body Stealers

Eats Chutes and Leaves

The Body Stealers
Directed by Gerry Levy
Tigon 1969
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so this makes two badly made Tigon production films I’ve seen in one weekend but, in the case of this particular dud, unlike The Blood Beast Terror (reviewed here), The Body Stealers is at least a very interesting one… because all the parts seem so mismatched.

The story sees a few batches of military skydivers on test jumps, hurling themselves from their planes but... with only their chutes landing on the ground (some of which are mysteriously stolen later in the story). General Armstrong, played by George Sanders gets his right hand man, played by Neil Connery (brother of Sean), to get some kind of army specialist out of retirement (for no apparent reason) to investigate just what is going on.

Enter said specialist, ‘beyond womanising’ Bob Megan, played by rugged Patrick Allen. He is aided and abetted by two doctors played by Hilary Heath and Maurice Evans (that’s Dr. Zaius to you, apes fans!) but… what has the strange girl on the nearby beach, Lorna, played by the ravishing Pamela Conway, got to do with everything. As she and Bob get over friendly and naked on the beach, the audience has to ask themselves, is she a space maiden who has something to do with the missing jumpers? Well yeah, probably.

And the tone of this one is all over the place. The opening credits where jumpers are being abducted is scored by Reg Tilsley with some romping title music which is totally inappropriate to the visuals and, I have to say, the music continues in this fashion throughout the film. Some of the minor dramatic moments are underscored… or really overscored… with piercing stingers so strident that I think even John Barry himself would have been given pause to rethink before jotting them down. There’s even a moment in the score which sounds exactly like the opening of Holst’s Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, at one point.

And then there’s the two nude scenes with the truly stunning Pamela Conway. They feel completely out of place, especially the extended sex scene on the beach where the awkward actors have crashing waves superimposed over them. This and the music looks like it’s trying desperately to capture a teenage market by tacking stuff onto a film which has none of the trappings of the youth culture in its make up, aside from these elements.

And not only does it have no real appeal for that segment of the market, it clearly has no budget either. The aliens are just humanoids and, well, their spaceship is cloaked so you can’t see it. Except in one sequence where it features in two shots and… well I don’t know how Tigon got their hands on the model but it’s clearly the Dalek starship from the earlier Amicus/Aaru production Daleks Invasion Of Earth 2150AD (reviewed here). I mean, really, how did this happen?

So what more can I say about The Body Stealers? Is it a good movie? No, it’s terrible. As was the case of The Blood Beast Terror, I feel Hammer or Amicus would have made a much better movie out of this one. Could I recommend it to anyone… well no, not in all conscience. But, I did enjoy 88 Films Blu Ray transfer of the film from a lovely print and I’ll certainly be watching this one again if time and mortality permit.

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.

The Falcon Takes Over

The Case Of The
Plundered Chandler

The Falcon Takes Over
USA 1942
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Well, this is the first of a kind of sea change for The Falcon movies (yeah... but just wait until we get to the next one). The second movie, A Date With The Falcon (reviewed here), had already jettisoned the stories being based on the original short fiction while just retaining the character (pretty much like the majority of the Bond movies but at least Hollywood had a decent excuse in this instance). This one also gets rid of The Falcon's fiancé. The last one wrapped up with The Falcon (played by George Sanders) on a plane with his side kick Goldy (played by Allen Jenkins) and his girlfriend (played by Wendy Barrie) on a plane and set to land at another town and get married. Well, for some reason, this one picks up back in New York and it’s said that The Falcon’s fiancé is... out of town. Which makes no sense in terms of how the last one ended but, well, I don’t think she’s coming back to be honest because Barrie, nor the character, seem to have returned for the next one (and given how events transpire in the next one, if memory serves, then that was her last chance to return in the same capacity... but we’ll get to that when we come to it).

So anyhow, this leaves The Falcon and Goldy free to make the life of James Gleason as Inspector Mike O'Hara a misery again, as Gay Lawrence (alias The Falcon) gets accidentally embroiled in another case. And not just anybody’s case, as it happens... Phillip Marlowe’s case, in fact. Not that Marlowe is in this movie... The Falcon is standing in for him. In fact, this film is the first movie version (pre-dating Murder My Sweet by two years) of Raymond Chandler’s famous Marlowe tale Farewell My Lovely. It’s nowhere near as good as the Dick Powell version, of course... however, this is a vehicle for the title character so a lot of the plot of that one is jettisoned too.

In this version we have Ward Bond playing the Moose Malloy character who gets so many people in trouble on the trail of his ‘sweetheart’, the evil Velma. We also have a young, ‘would be’ reporter standing in as The Falcon’s main female interest in this one, played by Lynn Bari. She’s pretty good in this and basically does all the kind of things Wendy Barrie was doing in the previous two movies to an extent but, at least in this one, not everybody ends up in jail (only Goldy for a short while).

There’s not an awful lot to say about this movie, to be fair. The actors are all doing fine in their formulaic roles and the film breezes along at just over an hour. Sanders does a nice turn when he’s pretending to be drunk to stop himself being killed by Moose at one point. Of further note is Helen Gilbert in the role of Diana Kenyon. It’s easy to figure out just who she really is in this whole ‘mystery’ but, I have to say, she has a real sexual ‘femme fatale’ presence in this and I’m really surprised she only had 18 films to her credit... I think she shows real star quality here.

The film is not nearly as action packed as the last movie and, although there are a lot of moments of broad humour, it's not nearly as fast paced either which, considering this story’s source, is not completely unsurprising. People aren’t dying every five minutes in this one because the story is more convoluted than that. Well, it’s not because the writers aren't trying hard to simplify it to the extent that, well, it doesn’t really play out in as interesting way as the proper, future adaptations of the book, for sure.

And that’s me done again already with this one. A very good friend of mine, whenever I write a review which I think is way too short, always tells me that ‘short’ is good. Well, I don’t necessarily agree with that but I think in the case of some of my 13 reviews of The Falcon series (more coming soon), short will have to do. The movies themselves are extremely short and, well, this one and probably many more, don’t have much of interest to note. So apologies if you feel I’ve given The Falcon Takes Over short shrift but... I don’t have much of anything else to say about it. It’s a light, breezy and reasonably entertaining movie with another solid performance by George Sanders in the title role. A role which he would relinquish at some point into the running time of the next movie but, like I said before, I’ll get to that one soon.

A Date With The Falcon

Marry In Haste

A Date With The Falcon
USA 1942
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Warner: Some spoilers lurk within.

Released just three months after The Gay Falcon (reviewed here), which was the first film in this 13 movie series, A Date With The Falcon once again stars George Sanders as Gay Lawrence, Allen Jenkins as his sidekick Goldy and, contrary to what the muddleheaded IMDB has to say about the matter in their trivia section, Wendy Barrie is back as his fiancé Helen Reed. And this time, The Falcon and Helen are getting ever closer to tying the knot, if only Gay can make his rendezvous on time and take the agreed plane to cart them off to their wedding. But, of course, instead of catching the plane they are trying for... and much to Helen’s mounting ire during the course of the movie... the three become embroiled in another criminal adventure.

This is the first of many not based on the original short story by Michael Arlen (as the first film) but just using his character. However, in spite of the Hollywood tendency to spin their own yarn to suit the screen and mess things up, this one proves that the studio certainly knew their job here as it’s a much more pacier and fun film than the previous installment.

The plot involves an inventor, Waldo Sampson (played by Alec Craig), who can copy and manufacture diamonds which have exactly the same properties as real ones from which they cannot be told apart. The problem where he’s concerned, it turns out, is that he’s a ‘kindly inventor’ and has developed the formula to manufacture these as a cheap option for their use in industrial equipment like drill heads. Of course, this is not why criminals want both the formula and the man behind them and it isn’t long before Waldo is found dead... or is he? What most people don’t realise is that it’s only his twin brother who has been iced by ‘the bad guys’ and that the real Waldo has been kidnapped so the formula can be extracted from him and sold for a profit. Enter The Falcon, who finds himself accidentally involved in the case, despite trying to refuse Inspector Mike O’Hara, played by James Gleason. Something that both Helen and Goldy are a mite displeased about.

This one has quite a nice few touches that set it apart from a lot of the stuff going on in films I’ve seen from that period. Not that they’re necessarily unique, of course... just that I haven’t seen nearly enough films from this period, obviously...

One thing the story does, for instance, is have the criminals try to take out The Falcon, first by shooting at him and, when that fails, by kidnapping him as a deterrent in case he should decide to get involved. So, yeah, a kind of pro-active strategy because The Falcon’s former reputation precedes him and they want to take no chances. Thus they inevitably bring about their own future doom by involving him peripherally in the plot against his will. This is something, actually, that a lot of criminal gangs in the Doc Savage novels of the 1930s and 1940s used to try regularly, because Doc’s larger than life personality was such that if he ever got involved in their plot, their chances of carrying it out successfully would be pretty slim. So, yeah, it’s an old storytelling ruse for sure but I don’t remember it coming up too many times in the movies. It somehow feels a bit too convenient to me here, though.

The film rolls along at a breakneck pace too. The Falcon manages to get his kidnappers’ car pulled up by insulting the police in a neighbouring squad car and using their fury at him to arrest him and bring him safely out of the grasp of his captors. Once again, George Sanders shows a flair for a good comic turn and, in a later scene where he’s not concentrating on what he’s doing, perfectly times, along with Wendy Barrie, a moment where he manages to pour champagne on a table instead of in her glass without either of them noticing. This is shortly before the villains have him in their clutches once again.

As usual, his fiance gets him in even more trouble trying to get him out of it. For example, when he gets into a hotel room and finds the dead body purported to be that of the inventor, he clambers out onto the ledge outside a fifth floor hotel room to evade capture by the police when they arrive, only to have his waiting fiance on the street below make a scene and call attention to him, allowing the police to discover him. Which is a neat little thing right there... normally those ledge walk scenes in thrillers always work.

And, like the previous film, both Goldy and Helene both find themselves running afoul of the police in different situations and both end up under arrest while the police attempt to round up their number one suspect, The Falcon. Of course, all goes well at the end and, like the previous movie, everything comes out in the wash when all the guilty and innocent parties converge in the police station. This one doesn’t end up with a ‘new case’ dropping The Falcon’s way as the last film did and, that wasn’t picked up in this one anyway. Instead, we have a scene where Gay, Helen and Goldy are in a plane and on their way to their wedding destination. Whether the next film picks up from that I can’t remember (it’s been a few decades since I last watched these) but I’ll find out soon enough courtesy of Warner Archives’ two volume collection of the films in the series.

A Date With The Falcon has less stunning shot set ups in it compared to the prior movie but makes up for it with a wittier script, a lively and continually twisty plot and, of course, a nice ensemble of actors who have good chemistry together. Definitely a good time if you like 1940s mystery thrillers and I look forward to the next ones. It’s just a shame that George Sanders... oh no, wait, I’ll get to that in a couple of Falcon movie reviews’ time.

The Gay Falcon

Lawrence
Flight n’ Gal

The Gay Falcon
USA 1941
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

George Sanders made five movies in 1941 alone, which was pretty much par for the course in Hollywood of old. The first one he shot that year was his final appearance as Simon Templar in The Saint In Palm Springs (reviewed here). The series continued without him but Sanders’ final 1941 movie was the first of what was a 13 film series based on a Michael Arlen character called The Falcon... who was very much like The Saint, although he was more like a private detective. Indeed, the creator of The Saint, Leslie Charteris, who wasn’t best mates with RKO, tried to sue the studio as he saw the character as a cheap imitation of him (the results of the dispute have never been made public, as far as I can see). Hugh Sinclair carried on in the role of Templar in the series of movies based on The Saint character.

Now, it’s often said that The Falcon film series was 16 films long but that’s actually not true. The last three movies are based on another writer’s novels of a character also called The Falcon, although, for some reason, the series was still credited up as being Arlen’s character, even though it’s clearly not the same person. This would explain why the two Warner Archive DVD collections only cover the first 13 films. That being said, Sanders only played The Falcon in the first three and, in an interesting move... oh no... I’ll get to that interesting swerve in the series when I get to the third movie.

Anyway, Sanders was now heading up The Falcon series and, in a move to give audiences a more ‘saintly experience’, they also cast Wendy Barrie as his long suffering fiancé who is trying to get him to give up crime solving and other women. Barrie had already starred opposite Sanders in three separate Simon Templar movies, although she played different characters in each. The Falcon also has a side kick in these films, much like The Saint would often have a ‘stooge’ helping him out. In this film it’s Allen Jenkins playing ex-thief Jonathan G. 'Goldie' Locke. And another element which is interchangeable with The Saint films was the common practice of having a police inspector who gets things wrong and eventually accepting the lead character’s help to solve the crime... in this film it’s Arthur Shields as Inspector Mike Waldeck.

In the books, the lead character is actually called Gay Falcon but, in the first film here, he’s Gay Laurence (which changed to Gay Lawrence for the next two) and The Falcon is more of an alias (again, as in The Saint films). So yeah, if you watch The Gay Falcon it is pretty much like watching another Saint sequel, to be honest, although the screenplay on this one doesn’t quite have the same, well, written sparkling wit of Sanders’ former role.

That being said, it’s an entertaining enough watch although it’s a little light on action. I can’t remember if the series gets more action oriented as it goes on because, the last time I watched these would have been in the early 1980s on BBC2 at 5.40pm or 6.20pm on weekday evenings, when the re-runs of the Charlie Chan and The Saint films had run their course. However, light on action doesn’t mean it’s light on murders (there are three of them) and there’s lots of running around as both The Falcon and Goldie are both under suspicion from the police at various points in the movie.

Sanders pays it cool and his new female assistant (Nina Vale, for this one movie only) helps him get by the police while at the same time bringing down the wrath of his fiance, who inadvertently gets him into more trouble as the story goes on. Although I suspected the real villain of the movie, who is revealed in a twist near the end of the picture, I didn’t really see it coming until I’d remembered at the end of the picture, just before the reveal, that I’d considered this a possibility at the start of the movie... so that’s kind of good. The camera work is quite good too, with people being framed in the 4:3 ratio as and when they are needed in the shot and almost making up ‘too perfect’ photographic compositions on cue. There’s a lovely sequence, for example, where Sanders and Vale have broken into a hotel room and are waiting on the ledge outside the windows for the returning owner of the apartment to leave again. When that happens, Sanders re-enters the room but we stay outside as Sanders is perfectly framed in a middle slice of the screen with square petitioned window frames creating the space for the action on either side. There’s some quite nice stuff in the movie, for sure.

Paul Sawtell provides some appropriate but not too striking music here and the pace, even without much action, is fairly fast and, like I said, it’s an okay entry into the series which would run for quite a few installments. Each story ends with a kind of cliffhanger preview which may or may not dovetail into the next film in the series. I don’t believe the throwaway end scene of a lady in distress is picked up in the next one but I’ll let you know soon enough. I’ll be working my way through these pictures, revisiting them now after many decades and I’ll bring the reviews to the blog as I work my way through them. I loved these as a teenager and I’m sure I’ll be spellbound by them now. So I’ll make A Date With The Falcon again sometime soon.

The Saint In Palm Springs

Errant Stamps

The Saint In Palm Springs
USA 1941 Directed by Jack Hively
Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

So here we have the next installment of my off and on rewatch of the movies based on The Saint. This is the sixth in the series and it’s also the fifth and final one for George Sanders in the title role. Sanders would jump ship on the Simon Templar but not the studio when he swapped this role out for another character who Leslie Charteris, writer of The Saint novels, once referred to as a ‘bargain basement’ version of his. I’m talking, of course, of the films where he played The Falcon... which was a series which also left him behind after a while but in a much more interesting fashion, if I recall correctly. Don’t worry, I’ll get to that when I start revisiting The Falcon movies for this blog. They’re on the ‘to watch’ pile.

It’s actually a bit of a film for ‘lasts’, actually. This is Jonathan Hale’s fifth and final appearance as Inspector Fernack. This is also Wendy Barrie’s third and final appearance in The Saint series of films but, strangely, she plays a different character in each one. She also followed her leading man Sanders into The Falcon series. Finally, we also have Paul Gullifoyle playing in his third and final of The Saint movies... although it’s only the second appearance of his character Clarence ‘Pearly’ Gates in this one.

The film is a short one but it’s a charming romp, like most of them and, although Sanders maybe is a little too ‘upper class’ for the role, he still does a great job and who can blame him with the quality dialogue he gets in these things. The words used in these 1930s and 1940s films positively sing themselves off the page and they really show up the movies that are thrust into our cinemas these days. Nobody is writing dialogue as good as this anymore.

The Saint In Palm Springs starts off with a ticker tape directive to arrest The Saint as he disembarks from an ocean voyage but, of course, he gives the two welcoming policemen the slip and fastens them together with their own handcuffs when they try to take him in. When The Saint turns up shortly later, unnanounced, in Ferneck’s office, we find it was all an elaborate ruse by the inspector to attract The Saint’s attention so he could ask him for some unofficial help. That help being that he wants Simon Templar to escort his friend and the extremely valuable stamps he has on him to a close family member of the gentleman in question. These stamps are worth gazillions of dollars and there have already been two attempts made on his friend’s life.

Ferneck, who is a character I enjoy a lot, is only in the movie for... probably less than ten minutes but he starts the adventure off and he also has probably the best line for when his detectives return empty handed and cuffed together by The Saint... “Well, you'd better go down to the police garage and borrow a file. When you get those things off, you better use it to sharpen your wits.” Of course, one wonders why the heck he had to send out a false telegram to his own department to look for The Saint anyway, instead of just sending them out to discretely collect him but... um... no, I’ve got no answer for that one.

Alas, Ferneck’s friend bites the bullet, so to speak, just after Templar arrives. Templar manages to hold on to the stamps, however and agrees to deliver the ‘cargo’ to Wendy Barrie’s character Elna Johnson personally and look after her/them until they can be safely and officially squirreled away. On the way he meets a femme fatale who right away tips her hand to the audience that she is after the stamps but also, it seems, there is more than one interested party in these tiny scraps of paper.

The film then, for all its one hour and six minute running time, becomes a series of scenes in Palm Springs where The Saint, Elna and Pearly Gates try to keep up with the stamps as these little items leave a trail of corpses in their path. It's a flimsy plot but, with all that sparkling dialogue it's a pleasant enough watch and, although not his best, finishes Sander's run on the series fairly nicely (in fact, he literally rides of into the sunset on a horse at the end of the tale, like an old Western movie). There are some fairly silly things about it too though...

Like the fact that expert pickpocket Pearly Gates is on probation and he has to check in each day after his job with his parole officer to keep himself from going to jail for ten years... so what job have they found him to do while on parole? House Detective for the resort that Templar is staying in, of course. Seriously? How in heck do you give a seasoned criminal a tide over job as a house detective... this makes no sense. It’s almost as silly as the overhead model shot of Palm Springs used as an establishing shot when The Saint arrives. I’m pretty sure it’s a model because there are no people walking around it... then, when we cut to the resort itself, all the exterior locations seem to have been recreated in a studio. It’s not an uncommon thing for those days but it does look fairly silly at times.

Another silly thing is the presence of George Sanders’ stunt double during a ‘lights out’ fist fight during the story. I use the word ‘double’ loosely because, honestly, he looks nothing like the person he’s doubling for. And it’s not a particularly violent fist fight either, to be fair. One wonders why they needed a stunt double for this scene in the first place. Perhaps at Sanders insistence?

All silliness aside, though, The Saint In Palm Springs is still another good dose of Simon Templar’s shenanigans and, once again, features a Roy Webb score which utilises the ‘Saint jingle’ that Sanders whistles throughout. Whether it was actually Leslie Charteris or Roy Webb who came up with that jingle is a matter on which there is some disagreement but it gives the films some continuity (which even carried over to the Ian Ogilvy TV series Return Of The Saint in the late 1970s, if my memory is not failing me). So, much to be recommended in this one and, as I said earlier, I will be following Sanders’ transition into The Falcon series in a while (not to mention Tom Conway’s version of the character... which makes for an interesting story itself). In the meantime, I will carry on with The Saint series with an actor I don’t recall seeing in the part before, taking over from Sanders. The next three films, I think, are totally new to me. So look out for that next one at some point in the very near future.

The Saint Takes Over

Tomb’s Raider

The Saint Takes Over
USA 1940
Directed by Jack Hively
RKO/Warner Brothers Archive 
DVD Region 1

And, once again, I’m back into the process I started a couple of years ago on this blog, that of rewatching all of The Saint movies. This one is called The Saint Takes Over and is the first one, as far as I can make out, not having the direct writing influence of the character’s creator and scribe, Leslie Charteris. The previous movie was also not based on a Charteris novel but it did have his involvement in developing the script... which was a surprise to me considering the gimmicky nature of the previous outing, The Saint’s Double Trouble (reviewed by me here).

Now it always makes me scratch my head when the makers of films based on the books of a prolific writer such as Charteris (there are so many Saint novels out there) choose to do their own thing with the writing rather than call on any number of a wealth of already great books involving the character but, there you go... maybe they got away with paying Charteris less for the use of the character rather than base it on one of the novels, who knows? What I do know for sure is that there’s no real drop in quality in this one.... although the Simon Templar character seems to be much more honest and playing up to the “modern Robin Hood” reputation he has earned in the fictional universe in which he exists. Perhaps to temper Templar’s lack of true criminal deeds in this one, George Sanders manages to play him, with the help of some well written dialogue, as still existing as that character with no drop in credibility at not “rubbing anyone out” or “thieving money”. Indeed, the one slight untruth he wishes to bring into play as a fiction created for the police is even exposed by the person he’s trying to protect in a scene right near the end of the film... but I don’t want to give away too many spoilers on this one.

The film opens, and I think this must be the first time in any of The Saint movies, with an animated version of Simon Templar’s famous stick figure at the beginning of a more standard credits sequence... accompanied when this animation is active, by the whistled version of the title character’s signature melody, composed by either the film’s “music director” Roy Webb or Charteris himself... depending on who’s story you believe (for more on this dilemma, see some of my other reviews of the earlier Saint films). I don’t know if an animated figure features in any of the later films in this series (I will know soon but I can’t remember from the last time I saw them all, decades ago) but I do remember they used to use stick figure animations on the end titles of the Ian Ogilvy TV series The Return Of The Saint... which also made use of that famous, musical jingle as an ingredient of its theme tune.

After the credits we see Sanders playing The Saint using his Sebastian Tombs identity and behaving in a less than welcome, forward manner on a cruise ship (which is something Sanders could always get away with in that he was pretty much typecast as “a cad” as an actor). The brunt of his affection, Ruth Summers, is played by Wendy Barrie, who also played the leading lady in a couple of the other George Sanders movies about the character. Bizarrely, she played a completely different character in each of these movies and it wasn’t until she followed Sanders into The Falcon series of movies, the following year, that she got to play a repeat character opposite Sander’s hero. The Saint saves her from a couple of card sharks and also gets to paraphrase the famous Dorothy Parker quote “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” with the line “Don’t go to bridge classes with men who wear glasses” here. This made me chuckle and I guess that must mean one of the film's two screenplay writers, Lynn Root or Frank Fenton, must have been a fan or, remembering the circles Parker moved in at the time, possibly knew her at one point.

We also learn in this sequence that the New York Police Inspector Fernack, played so wonderfully again by Jonathan Hale, has been suspended from activity by the police. In fact, he’s been framed by a collective, criminal ring of mobsters who planted $50,000 in his safe. Soon enough, both Templar and, in a quite obvious twist which I won’t comment on too much here because it deals with something which some people might still consider to be a ‘reveal’, Ruth Summers, plus the wonderful Paul Guilfoyle as new series regular Clarence “Pearly” Gates... are all working, one way or another (by the end of the movie), to clear Inspector Fernack’s name. This is proving difficult because, each time Templar and Fernack try to isolate one of the key witnesses to testify about the frame up, they end up dead and in such a way that it looks like Fernack has rubbed them out himself.

That’s about as much as I’m going to say about the plot of this one because it is fairly simplistic but there’s more than enough to make up for it in the way of sparkling dialogue and the way it’s shot.

The film is full of loaded comedy shenanigans with Sanders and Hale bouncing lines off each other... with Fernack once more finding himself working with Templar when he really should be handing him in to the police as a key suspect. It’s fun to see him at a loss, too, when he complains at the start of the film that, now he’s been suspended, it feels funny not to be going into work. Fernack’s wife hands him the washing up from their breakfast and says, “Thats what you think is it? That's your mistake Henry. Youre just going to find out what real work is." Which is a nice, comic moment with a certain amount of truth I’m sure a lot of housewives and househusbands would clearly identify with.

The way the movie is shot is not overly creative but it’s certainly not nearly as dull as it could be. Asides from the great noir style lighting making full use of hard to see sets and landscapes, shadows and silhouettes, as was standard practice in the days of cinema when the directors weren’t afraid of leaving the lights off in scenes, there are also some nice touches which director Jack Hively gives the film to lift it out a bit where other, less conscientious directors, may well have left it a more mediocre concoction. He tends to use a lot of moving camera, for example, and in a scene where a character has to read from a paper, he has the character and his associate walk around the room to read from the paper, the camera following them to raise the level of subconscious interest in the visual style and thus aid concentration of the otherwise dull trotting out of plot points.

There’s also a nice bit of visual shorthand where two of the many villains of the film, although one turns out to be an ally by the end of the picture, are introduced by two big photos in a newspaper with a headline explaining their story function... backed up by some dramatic, sinister music which tells you right away that there is villainy afoot and the film makers would like you to associate that villainy with these two, for the time being. This is, obviously, a tried and tested formula for these kinds of movies and, although it’s slipped out of use... presumably for it’s quick fix, clichéd familiarity... it certainly contributes to the director’s overall speedy pacing of this movie... which is a valuable asset when you consider that these things were just a little over an hour in running time, presumably released as B-features, and you really did have to move quickly to try and cram everything in.

There’s also an interesting bit of ‘almost’ product placement here. At one point, Pearly Gates is reading a newspaper and it’s made very clear he’s reading the Dick Tracy cartoon strip in the paper. Later on, the same character is reading one of the actual issues of the era’s Dick Tracy comics. Now I did some quick research, through the usual channels, and it seems that although there had already been three successful Dick Tracy serials, put out by Republic in the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1945 that the first of four stand alone films came out, released by RKO who also made this movie. I don’t know why it took another five years before a feature movie was made of the Dick Tracy character but the two references in this movie makes me wonder if they weren’t maybe already courting the rights to the character at this point. If anybody knows if that was the case or whether these two references were purely in the spirit of contemporary pop culture references, then please leave the info in the comments section below this review.

And that’s all I’ve really got to say about The Saint Takes Over. George Sanders and Jonathan Hale are both absolutely brilliant in this and ably supported by the kind of top notch character actors and actresses you would expect in this Golden Age of Hollywood movie making. Another thoroughly entertaining entry in the series and both Sanders and Wendy Barrie would return for just one more picture in The Saint series of films before jumping ship with the similar series of films about The Falcon character (yeah, don’t worry, they’re all on the pile to watch and review once I’m done with The Saint). If you like The Saint movies then this is definitely a corker and it certainly captures the spirit of the novels, barring those slight but skillfully hidden concessions towards the central character (possibly due to censorship issues and the Hayes code?) and fans of The Saint should definitely enjoy this one.

The Saint's Double Trouble

Templar Nights

The Saint's Double Trouble
USA 1940
Directed by Jack Hively
RKO DVD1 Region 1

So, finally, I am continuing with my catch up on the series of The Saint movies I started rewatching and reviewing a couple of years ago, after an unscheduled break. The Saint’s Double Trouble is the fourth in the series, and the third with George Sanders in the title role. Although this one, for some strange reason not known to me, is not directly based on any of the original Leslie Charteris novels, he apparently did have a hand in developing this one for the screen... which is a shame in some ways, due to the gimmicky nature of the plot. You’ll see what I mean in a minute, if the title doesn’t already give it all away to you.

The film starts off with a coffin being taken to a postal service in Cairo, being mailed, allegedly, by Simon Templar to his old Egyptologist friend Professor Bitts in the US (played here by Thomas W. Ross). And who do you think would walk into a post office with a coffin in his arms? Yep, here we have what can only be called a “guest role” for the original “authorised” screen Dracula, Bela Lugosi. After this scene, he drops out of the film until somewhere about two thirds of the way through the picture and it’s a shame that his inability to learn the English language, and having to learn his scripts phonetically, had already reduced him to these kinds of minor roles. In this film he plays a character called “The Partner”, who is really just a human clue for Simon Templar to pick up on in his fight against the real villain of the piece.

Now, after having watched this for 15 minutes, I started getting confused. By this time, you see, I had forgotten what the title of the movie was and when Simon Templar went back to his hideout to consult with his gang of criminals... um. What? Yeah, it’s the old doubles plot. These days it’s one of the sure signs that a movie or TV show has gotten to the point where it’s “jumped the shark”, in modern parlance... and that’s one of the reasons why I was surprised Charteris was involved in this one. Even in those days it was getting to be a bit of a cliché, I suspect, and certainly a sign that the scriptwriters were running out of ideas. As it happens, though, it did manage to fool me... so it was either done incredibly subtly or... I didn’t anticipate the complete lack of realism in the way the characters were pitched.

By that last comment I mean to say that, although George Sanders is obviously playing both roles, his voice and characterisation of the “double” are exactly the same as each other. Seriously people? They’d even have the same voice? Furthermore... how the heck does the double know enough about Simon Templar’s personal life to be able to frame him for a string of murders? Anyone could fake up a Saint calling card, sure... but they wouldn’t, for instance, have a knowledge of the history between Simon Templar and Professor Bitts or, as it turns out, Professor Bitt’s daughter, played by Helene Whitney. So there’s that.

Still, it doesn’t really matter because the cast are all pretty good, although the locations being used all seem to be limited to the same three or four settings, with characters going back and forth between the specific areas laid out in the first 20 minutes of the movie... with the exception of a jail scene near the end of the film (and that’s giving away nothing in terms of plotting, by the way). Jonathan Hale is back on hand as Inspector Fernack, the Inspector Teale equivalent of The Saint’s American set adventures... and I’m happy to say he’s playing the character a little smarter than he did in the last entry. Still not as sharp as he was in the original Louis Hayward opener, The Saint In New York (reviewed here), but certainly no longer a completely helpless buffoon, at least.

The pacing is not as speedy as the blistering third film in the series (reviewed here) and, in all honesty, the dialogue is not as sharp or as singing as it was in that one either. However, the characters are all fairly charming (even the villains) and it whiles away its short running time fairly pleasantly. Sanders impressed me a little by actually being quite ruthless and tough when it came to risking the lives of the people who are playing against him... and still manages to come out of it as less of a thug and more of a righteous person who is, nevertheless, also a Robin Hood style criminal. I was also pleased that the writers were not afraid of killing off one of the more likeable, good guy characters in the film... and stuff like that is always a bonus to add a touch of weight to the drama and ensure that to Simon Templar in this one, just like a 1980s action hero... this time it’s personal!

Now, to be fair, there were gaping plot holes in this and not too much done in terms of actual detecting and problem solving as Simon Templar tries to get to the bottom of the mystery. It’s very much late 1970s Roger Moore as James Bond territory when it comes to any actual investigative techniques being used. That being said, the lack of logic and realism in terms of the plot mechanics in no way detract from this being a pretty entertaining experience and Sanders is surprisingly capable in a role which has him leaping undetected onto the running boards of cars or being tied up in a sinking row boat... this is all good stuff.

Once again, the trademark tune which Sanders whistles and which is claimed by Charteris himself as his invention (although my money is still on musical director Roy Webb, who continues duties on this entry) is heard and, certainly, it’s something that fans of later incarnations of The Saint in film and television, especially Ian Ogilvy’s turn as Templar in the TV show Return Of The Saint, will be very familiar with. So it’s good that at least some films were going for a certain amount of musical continuity... much more than the powers that be in Hollywood seem to be attempting these days, at any rate.

The ending is a short and sweet affair. I’m pretty sure these shorter movies would have been made to be the supporting feature to larger budgeted productions in most cases, but it certainly ensures that the film doesn’t outstay it’s welcome and I have to say, despite my objections to Sanders in the role in comparison to Louis Hayward, who I think played the character perfectly to the version in the books, I am still having a blast with this series of films and am enjoying these just as much as I did in my early teens, in the 1980s. So you can be sure there’ll be another Saint review on here soon and I need to get my skates on in that respect so I can start catching up to The Falcon films again. Watch this space.

The Saint In London

Real Teal

The Saint In London
USA 1939
Directed by John Paddy Carstairs
Warner Archives Edition Region 1
Based on the novel The Saint In London, 
formerly The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal

Well that’s more like it George. This third outing in the original series of films is Mr. Sanders second go at the role and, well I’m warming to him much more after seeing this. His second crack at Simon Templar is, indeed, cracking ;-) and the fast paced action of the plot is matched more mercurially by Sanders whereas, in the previous film (reviewed here) he was a  lot more sedate, even lazy, in the role and it came off, to me, as something of a mismatch for The Saint.

With Simon Templar returning to London, you’d think he’d have a chance to settle down for a while but, right from the outset, this is an action packed ride with full on, wisecracking, 1930s screwball style dialogue which is as much to do with the original stories these films were based on as it is to do with the cinematic landscape contemporaneous to these movies.

Within the first few minutes, The Saint has whistled his famous ‘signature melody’, carried over from the last film, caught out a pickpocket in a brilliant bit of playful sleight of hand, hired said pickpocket to be his butler and assistant, and then picked up with an old female acquaintance who will join him in his adventures in this movie... his additional, ‘unofficial assistant” who becomes so because she saves his life at least once.

The action is tightly paced but very focused on telling the story and the quickfire delivery is polished and subtle in its writing... and more importantly... Sanders really keeps up with it this time. I actually found him a joy to watch in this one... which was a bit of an improvement on my perceptions of him in the last one and a massive improvement on the way I usually see Sanders. I’m beginning to believe in him a bit more... and am keeping my fingers crossed that George holds that performance in the next few (it’s been years since I last saw these... literally decades). This director really knows how to play to Sander’s strengths, it seems to me, and it’s interesting that he also directed some of The Saint’s 60s TV adventures and had a dedication written to him in one of the original novels... Leslie Charteris obviously thought a lot of this director.

We also have the first bona fide screen appearance of The Saint’s original “reluctant ally”, Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, played here by Gordon McLeod, who really does make a great version of him. He reprised the role a couple more times in this series for RKO. Like the American counterpart to this character from the previous two films, Inspector Fernack, he is supposed to be after Templar but then lends his aid when he realises The Saint can help him find the real bad guys in the movie.

And as bad guys go, the leader of the set up is not a fool and almost a match for The Saint and his rag tag gang of friends. He feels dangerous, which is just the kind of man you want as an opponent to Templar and it would be true to say that all of the actors and characters in this film are, perhaps, little known but certainly very good at elevating the tension and highlighting the bubbly humour inherent in the script. A nice piece of work all round in this one and the film-makers even remember to put the steering wheel on the right hand side of the cars for a movie set in London... which is quite handy. Of course, if the film hadn’t actually been called The Saint In London then I probably would have been less wiser as to where the action of this one was supposed to be taking place. I doubt if any of the crew actually got over to England for this one... although I might be wrong, I guess.

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter where the movie was shot in my book, because when you’ve got great, quotable lines like, “It ain’t no water pistol, so watch out where you squirt that lead!” right from the word go, then you know you’re in for a treat of a movie. Definitely looking forward to watching the next one.

The Saint Strikes Back

Saint George

The Saint Strikes Back
USA 1939
Directed by John Farrow
Warner Archives Edition Region 1

Well I’m happy to say that this second movie of Leslie Charteris’ popular character The Saint, the first of five from the original series in which George Sanders took over the role of Simon Templar from Louis Hayward, was not nearly as hard to watch as I was expecting it to be, bearing in mind the following two factors:

1. I love Louis Hayward’s interpretation of the role in the first of his two films playing the character, The Saint In New York (reviewed here) and believe this is really the one where the character was nailed and played just like the character in the books. They really got it right.

2. I really don’t empathise with George Sanders too much. He wrecked the romance between The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, leaving Mrs. Muir the only option of finding true love after her own death and he was rather indifferent to the fate of Quiller in the movie adaptation of The Quiller Memorandum (aka The Berlin Memorandum) too. Yes, I know I’m totally responding to his on-screen image but until I see evidence to the contrary, this is the way I’ll always continue to see him. This reaction to him is, of course, evidence that he was probably a great actor.

Now I don’t know why Louis Hayward didn’t continue to play The Saint in subsequent films in the series until another single stab at the role in the fifties, but Sanders really isn’t too much of a disaster in the role. Certainly, from what I remember of the novels, his interpretation of the role is a valid one, and the film is done fairly faithfully, from what little I can recall, to the spirit of the story on which it was based (She Was A Lady aka The Saint Meets His Match by Leslie Charteris). However, although the character continues to have all those wonderful one liners, I find Sanders’ delivery of his lines just way too slow and, well, almost lazy. I keep wanting him to spit out what are, in all honesty, supposed to be quick-fire, screwball comedy style one-liners, like the way I read them in the books (yeah, I know, don’t go there... not getting into that argument with you). George is just a little too laid back for my liking... I can’t imagine this guy doing anything fast. However, the plus side to this is, of course, that this characterisation of Templar now seems a lot more confident... if some guys are pointing guns at your chest and you can’t be bothered to do anything that quickly, you must be a confident so-and-so, right?

George Sanders whistles a tune in this film for the first time, which is also worked into Roy (Cat People) Webb’s score for the movie. This is used in some of the subsequent films and scores in the series as a signature tune for The Saint and was even re-used for the character as late as the opening prelude jingle to the start of the theme tune in the 1978 Ian Ogilvy version of the TV show, Return Of The Saint. There seems to be much dispute as to who actually wrote this theme tune, with many saying it was Webb and Leslie Charteris, the author of the novels on which these are based, saying he composed it for George Sanders to whistle on set. Either could be true... I don’t know if Webb would have been involved with providing source music before the film was in the can or not but he certainly used it in the score and Sander’s whistle “could” have been added in post-production or even in pick up shots. I guess it’s something we’ll never know the truth of but it’s an iconic jingle which will live forever in fans of the character.

The film keeps up links to the previous film in the series by a few references and the addition of a recurring actor/character... which is probably a good idea if you’re going to suddenly change the lead actor on everyone, I guess. Of course, there’s a much clever way of changing your lead actor as seen in The Saint copycat movie series toplining, The Falcon... but I’ll get to that on this blog sometime later this year or early next year. Got ‘em lined up in a pile to watch after I’m done with the majority of The Saint series (want to watch them all in chronological order which means The Falcon series starts before the first Hugh Sinclair movie in The Saint series, I think). Anyway, where was I? Recurring character... to this end, Jonathan Hale returns as Inspector Fernack, the US equivalent of Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard (in the books set in England) from the first movie. It would, however, be true to say that the character has changed somewhat. It’s a subtle shift but where the character was a very helping hand to Templar in the first film, and very much a character in his own right, here he has been reduced to the role of bumbling comedy sidekick, very much fulfilling the same function that the excellent Nigel Bruce portrayal of Dr. Watson used to fill in the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes movies. So Hale is great to watch but the comic vignettes with Sander’s Saint pranking him are something I could have done without... I prefered the more dangerous and infinitely more intelligent version of Hales characterisation of Fernack that he used opposite Louis Hayward a heck of a lot more.

Still, it’s really not a bad movie and there are some great little “spot the actor” moments in this one. A young Tristram Coffin (yeah, that’s right, King Of The Rocket Men) can be glimpsed right at the start and a less minimal role is filled by a young Neil Hamilton, who readers may remember best as Comissioner Gordon opposite Adam West’s Batman. There’s also Willie Best, playing Simon’s butler, who used to turn up in films in the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series', on hand too. But the big find in this one is an early, sizeable, happy-go-lucky sidekick role for a young (he was never young) actor called Barry Fitzgerald, here playing a thief named Zipper Dyson. I’ll never forget Fitzgerald’s performance opposite John Wayne in The Quiet Man and he’s an absolute pleasure to watch here, too.

Definitely a nice little movie, this one, and I’m sure I’ll warm to Sander’s portrayal as the series continues (and to his role as The Falcon in the first four movies in that film series). Looking forward to them a lot. Give this one a go if you’ve not seen it before but I’d definitely start off with The Saint In New York, which this is technically a sequel to, before seeing this one.

The Saint In New York

Saint Louis Blues

The Saint In New York
US 1938
Directed by Ben Holmes
ODEON (for RKO) Region 2

When I first went to see Tarantino’s excellent Inglorious Basterds at the cinema (the first of many cinema trips to see that shiny opus), I was delighted to notice that the main female protagonist, Shosanna, was sitting in a cafe in France reading a copy of Leslie Charteris’ novel The Saint In New York in one scene (I think that’s about the sixteenth in the long running series of books). Delighted because it took me back to my youth in two ways...

First to those old BBC2 5.40pm weekday showings of The Saint movies in the late 1970s/early 1980s. This was a popular dinner-time slot as they would have a regular series of films or serials at this time of night and we all used to watch them. Asides from serials like Daredevils Of The Red Circle, Hawk Of The Wilderness or Undersea Kingdom, Auntie Beeb also showed us as full runs as they were able to of Charlie Chan, The Saint and The Falcon movies from the 1930s and 1940s.

Secondly, it took me back to the discovery of a second hand book shop, about 25 minutes walk from my school, which I discovered a number of years after these movies. It was a great shop, a real treasure chest of gazillions of books in four or five rooms (a converted house), owned by a lady with whom I used to have many literary chats. But it was unusual in that it would only open its doors on a Thursday afternoon (most Thursdays... not all) and so you only had a small window of opportunity per week to visit. By then I also had a Saturday job so I had some small (very small income) but this was in the days when you could pick up some really great second hand books for 20p to 30p a pop. So, yeah, I used to take a carrier bag with me and go off, on a weekly basis with a half a dozen books or more... three of which, at least, would be read by the end of the week (I used to read a lot more than I do these days... sadly).

Here I would pick up literally dozens of Doc Savage novels (those brilliant, black spined Bantam reprints from the 60s and 70s) along with a helping of the Modesty Blaise novels, The Shadow novels, the “Harry Palmer” novels, the James Bond novels, the Quiller novels, the Boysie Oakes novels, the Conan novels, Michael Moorcock’s novels, Philip K. Dick’s novels... and around about 30 to 40 of the old editions of The Saint novels... all of which I loved.

Now I remembered watching the old Roger Moore series as a kid on telly, but these novels (and what I could remember of the films) were quite a bit different in style to those. I loved The Saint character in these books because he was so light hearted, thumbed his nose at all authority and talked absolute nonsense to people as he took the p*** out of the poor criminals he would go up against. Of course The Saint was a thief himself, but he only concentrated on plundering those who deserved it (criminals themselves, usually) or possibly the rich folk who wouldn’t really miss it (if memory served). I was (and still am), very much into The Marx Brothers at the time and the character as portrayed in the books had a very Groucho Marx/Bugs Bunny attitude to him... while still being a deadly fellow you wouldn’t want to come up against in a fight. He’d outsmart you.

Of all The Saint movies I saw as a kid, I remember this very first one, starring Louis Hayward as Simon Templar/The Saint (sometimes, he also used the alias Sebastian Tombs to get his St. designation from his initials) as being the absolute best of the bunch in terms of the actual character as read in the books up there on the screen. Hayward plays him as light and fluffy (and as deadly) as in the original stories, which were obviously contemporary literature of the time. Unfortunately, George Sanders would take over the role after this first one, followed later by Hugh Sinclair. Louis Hayward would return to the role once more in the fifties (although the DVD companies seem to be a bit shy about remembering that fact in their liner notes at the moment, for some reason) in The Saints Return aka The Saint’s Girl Friday (1953) in some kind of bizarre Hammer films/RKO co-production from what I can make out (the IMDB is even a bit sketchy on this... anyone know the full details?). I’m not sure if I’ve actually seen that one or not and, as far as I can tell, it’s never been released on home video... no doubt due to a rights issue, I would expect. This is, of course, much more criminal than the acts of the gangsters and thugs that Simon Templar would find himself crossing paths with and a commercially available DVD should be made available immediately, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, as I was saying, nobody quite captured the spirit of The Saint as Louis Hayward did in The Saint In New York. The film is typical of its era, although I believe it had a certain amount of trouble in the violence stakes at the time... there’s a lot of shooting in this one. But perhaps it’s the attitude towards the casual killing of ones enemies that may have rankled the censors and critics of the time... The Saint does cold bloodedly execute a criminal without warning... sniping him while disguised as a nun, no less. Also, at one point, The Saint uses a criminal’s body as a shield while he reaches for a gun to take down the other shooter himself... not very practical in terms of actually being a shield but the movie does have the little touch of realism that Templar takes a bullet in the shoulder for his trouble.

The dialogue is very true to the spirit of the novels too... the witty banter singing itself off the screen almost like a 1930s screwball comedy, which were also contemporaneous to this movie and novel, of course. From what I can remember, nobody does it better, and I shall see how the George Sanders movies hold up to this formula very soon as I have them all on a Warner Archives edition ready to watch.

Added to all this is the shadowy chiaroscuro stylistic element of a film noir... perhaps a bit early for this kind of darkened, shadowy style of lightning if you believe the text books on film history, but not so early, in my opinion, that the lightning lessons from those early German Expressionist cinematographers who I personally think helped build the foundations of “American Film Noir”, weren’t already in practice in the US. Either that or the ODEON DVD transfer and print are muddier than I was expecting. There’s even has a bit of a tragic ending in this one where... oh no, I’d better not tell you. You need to see this one for yourself.

If you’ve never seen any of The Saint movies before, then this one is definitely the one to start off with... it’s a doozy. If, however, you only know the character in film from the George Sanders sequels which carried the series forward, then you really owe it to yourself to see the original flick. The first in a long line of actors who would play the character on screen... Louis did it the best.