The Saint Strikes Back

I love B-detective series films like Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes and The Falcon. Sure, they are mighty predictable, but there is also a certain charm and sense of fun about them that is hard to beat. While the Saint series is not my favorite, I have always enjoyed them because I love seeing George Sanders so gracefully navigate himself through the mystery--he was the epitome of cool and sophisticated. Because of this, I often find myself watching the film for his performance but caring little for the actual mystery (so many of them seem similar). However, in this dull effort, I just couldn't get past the lifeless plot and lack of decent supporting characters. Compared to most of the other films in this series, this might just be the worst, though I did appreciate how the film made reference to the prior film (starring Louis Hayward)--giving the film a sense of continuity and context. Now this isn't to say it's bad--but unfortunately, it is only a time-passer and not a whole lot more.

When Simon Templar (aka The Saint) helps self-styled crime boss and daughter of a disgraced cop Val Travers to get away from a nightclub after they were both involved in a shooting. The police connect Templar to the shooting and call in Inspector Fernack from New York to bring him in. Meanwhile Templar gets on the wrong side of Travers and earns her vengeance while also trying to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding her father's fall from grace at the hands of an internal investigation.

Following on from the hard edge and anti-hero approach of The Saint when he was in New York, this film cannot help but feel like much more of a sedentary affair with a more liberal approach perhaps befitting the San Francisco setting. That said the film still has a nice feel to it that makes it just a shade better than the b-movie series generally achieved from this point onwards. Much of the credit should probably lie with Farrow's direction because he does give it quite a professional and gritty atmosphere. The story is quite good although not anywhere near as engaging as it should have been and I must admit that at times I drifted away as it lacked a consistent hook to keep me watching.

Coming in to replace Hayward, Sanders was never really going to do it for me as I already knew him to be all about the smoothness and the suaveness and it didn't surprised me when his criminal edge was played down to almost nothing and he turned in the sort of performance that made him vastly inferior to the original Saint (in my mind anyway). Support is pretty good from Val Travers – not quite a femme fatale perhaps but certainly a tough woman when required. Hale is OK while people like Elliot, Fitzgerald etc all fill in around the edges.

Overall a well-directed film that is a reasonable stab at continuing the series but, for reasons that are perhaps obvious, scaling down the mean edge the original had. Problem is that I liked this about the original film and found this film lacking teeth for being smooth without the savage. Sanders is a nice lead but he cannot lift the material and the end result is a standard b-movie that will please fans of The Saint and The Falcon.

"The Saint Strikes Back" (1939) is directed by a young John Farrow, who would not only go onto to make film noir classics like "The Big Clock" (1948), "Alias Nick Beal" (1949) and "Where Danger Lives" (1950), but he would win an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Michael Todd's multi-award winning "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956). So, not only do you have a notable director at the beginning of his career here, but George Sanders in his first role as The Saint, eleven years away from getting the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for "All About Eve" (1950). Also, there are quite a few familiar faces in the picture: Jerome Cowan, Barry Fitzgerald and Jonathan Hale, all of whom would be active in the motion picture business in the forthcoming decade. So, historically, quite an important film. But there's a lot more to it than just recognisable names. The photography, by Frank Redman, is striking, an impressively long shot at the very beginning of the movie in particular, is a cut above the rest. The acting too, is polished and professional.

On the other hand, the screenplay, written by John Twist, from Leslie Charteris's "She Was a Lady" (1931), credited in the film as "Angels of Doom", while it moves briskly along, is a tad confusing. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you who did what and why in this film. But this doesn't detract form the enjoyment, and in a perverse way, it enhances it. It's not the best of its kind, but this proto-noir is certainly worth a watch.

You have to stay wide awake to follow the plot convolutions of THE SAINT STRIKES BACK and by the time it reaches its final scene you may lose your way keeping track of a number of undeveloped characters whose names are bandied about with such nonchalance that in the end it hardly matters when you discover who the main culprit is.

The plot revolves around hard-boiled dame WENDY BARRIE who's surrounded herself with gangsters in order to avenge the death of her father. Barrie gives the kind of performance that should have made her a femme fatale in a number of B-films, but nothing more than that. She's a one note actress if ever there was one.

Fortunately, the script is graced by the presence of GEORGE SANDERS, who can deliver a crisp line with so much bite and sarcasm that it's fun to see him using his verbal wit on some unsavory characters. NEIL HAMILTON makes no impression whatsoever in a colorless role as a man supposedly in love with Barrie, but BARRY FITZGERALD turns up to put some spice into the story, at least in the last half of the film.

It's strictly formula stuff intended to entertain as a programmer in the late '30s and offers nothing very original or new to make it anything more than something of passing interest.

It's not too bad a b movie, with Sanders, Barrie, Hale, Cowen, Hamilton, Gargan, Fitzgerald and even Willie Best we could be either with Charlie Chan, Moto, the Falcon, Blackie, Holmes or the Saint etc. In other words you get the chance to spend another hour in the company of some old friends, from plain to urbane, murdering and being murdered - always a pleasure in my book.

Barrie's a hard-boiled dame out to avenge and clear her framed and dead father, a police detective by planning and carrying out with her coterie a string of underworld assassinations. Which would surely have had the opposite effect! Sanders joins in the fun simply by dancing in the right club in the right place in the right city at the right time with the right lighting falling on both him and the first killer (at the right time!) and killing him.

The story and acting's OK, the only gripe I've got is near the end with the hurried and almost laughable discovery of who the evil genius (Waldeman) was - did they almost forget about his relevance in the plot? That said, a solid entry in the series.