Devil's Cargo

The Falcon returns...sort of. Not really. Two years after the RKO Falcon series ended, Poverty Row studio Film Classics began their own series. There's not much this has in common with the George Sanders/Tom Conway films. The Falcon, now played by John Calvert, has a new name: Michael Watling. Gone is the comic relief sidekick. Here the Falcon has a dog he talks to. Also gone are charm, wit, adventure, and everything else that worked in the previous series. This is just a generic detective tale, made on cheap sets with a forgettable lead backed up by a cast of actors who had seen better days. The RKO series was great. Even if the plots weren't always riveting, you could always rely on Sanders and Conway to deliver and the production values were usually very nice. This is just a big nothing burger. Sadly there are two more 'fake Falcon' films after this.

I found out something interesting. I looked up why the Falcon's name was changed from Lawrence to Waring to Watling. I never did find out why it changed from Waring to Watling (and you can hear they dubbed the name over every single time they said it).

However, I found out that there were two different Falcons by two different authors. The Sanders/Conway Falcon was one, and the ones with John Calvert is actually the other series.

At any rate, this is the usual low-budget poverty row film. A man named Delgado shows up while the Falcon is taking a bath and announces he's killed a man. He'll go to the police, but he gives the Falcon $500 and a key to hold for him.

Of course people want the key, which opens up a locker in a bowling alley. One of the reasons I like old films is that we see things that aren't around anymore - like public lockers that can hold bombs. In fact, this one did!

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I don't agree about John Calvert. I don't think he was bad, although I didn't like him in the final film. In this one he's more animated, and the film has a little humor.

Also, someone on this board was quite dismissive of his talent. Calvert was a magician who taught and performed magic until he died - at 102. He played the London Palladium at 100. We should all be so accomplished.

Gay and Tom Laurence (real life brothers George Sanders and Tom Conway) were the Falcon in the early 1940s. So why is a guy named 'Wattling' now appearing in some poverty row series where HE is called the Falcon as well?! In addition to not being the Falcon, this guy acts nothing like the suave and sophisticated Falcon of old. The new guy has a cute dog(!?) and talks incessantly--and he's just nothing like the originals.

As for the rest of the film, it's bizarre and nothing like the old Falcon plots either. Some knucklehead comes to Wattling and claims he murdered someone (so why didn't he just go to the cops first?!?!?). But, soon after, the admitted killer is himself murdered in prison--poisoned. So, Wattling appoints himself a some sort of avenging angel and spends the rest of the film trying to figure out who was behind all this--as well as to figure out what the man was REALLY planning before he died.

While the plot has some nice twists, the characters are just all wrong, the acting is terrible and I wouldn't even recommend this to Falcon freaks--as he's just a shadow of the originals at best. Dreadful on many levels.

This is the first of the three low budget Falcon mysteries after RKO had ditched the character. Here he comes in a different guise played by the career magician John Calvert. He has a cute dog called Brains Trust. The funniest Brains Trust moment is when the docile dog has been tied to a chair by an intruder to the Falcon's apartment.

Other bizarre moments include a skull ornament that chatters. Obviously the Falcon has learned magic skills to operate the skull to do this. I like the poster for this film that shows the skull wearing a magician's top hat. It's an attractive piece of film poster art that helped to attract my attention to this movie in the first place.

The mystery begins when a character named Delgado visits the Falcon for help to get him off on a crime of passion crime-alleviation charge with the police. He says he has killed a man for fooling with his wife. But is he being straight? The plot becomes more involved as suspicion passes from one character to another.

I reckon that this is a well disguised whodunit. Only a twist at the very end causes the real murderer to be revealed.

They probably should have stopped making Falcon movies when George Sanders and Tom Conway had finished their runs with the franchise. Hard to watch the Falcon become a shell of his old self. Spending more time with his dog than the ladies, and driving a Studebaker. The script may be okay, but it has a low-budget B Movie feel to it.