El halcón a la defensiva

Tom Lawrence gets off to a good start on his own as he wakes up with a hangover but with a sexy Latino lady standing over his bed. Mia Bruger is her name and she tells the Falcon of her concern for her missing brother. He meets her later to discuss the matter but someone knocks him out. He wakes up later on a country road in the backseat of his car with little knowledge of where he is. When he is arrested for a bank robbery and a murder, Lawrence works put that he has been set up and goes on the lamb to solve the crime and why he was set up.

In his first film on his own, Tom Conway opens with a typically suave turn in bed, hungover from his night on the town and waking with a beautiful woman in his room. From here the plot moves well to set up the mystery. It isn't a gripping thriller but it holds the interest by having enough going on and sufficient plot twists occur to help keep the pace up throughout. Much more enjoyable than the previous entry (Falcon's Brother) in this regard, the film is well written and well delivered.

After a so-so start in the last film, Conway seems like he was made for the role and within a few seconds of the first scene he is into it and great fun. His detecting skills are on show and he mixes them well with a debonair delivery and screen presence – the memory of Sanders slipped from my mind. Hilliard works well alongside him but, unusually for the series, there are quite a few strong female performances from Randolph, Gibson and Corday. After Lefty in the last film we get Goldie returning but this time played by Edwards. It is a basic turn and not as funny as I would have liked. Better comic support value comes from the pairing of Clark and Gargan (straight man and stupid man respectively); the simple comic scenes involving them are not imaginative but they do provide a few laughs.

Overall then a good entry in the series that is much more assured than The Falcon's Brother had been the year before. Consistent and with a good pace the film benefits from solid characters and good performances to produce a typically enjoyable film in this famous b-movie series.

I taped the whole Falcon series from UK TV in 1988, I guess I must have seen every entry at least 10 times so far since and this is one of my favourites. It's the usual inconsequential mix of comedy and crime, smart ass one-liners and murders, non-serious but jealous romances, and atmospherically photographed melodrama that can keep you pleasantly occupied for just over an hour, that is if you like the genre.

Tom Lawrence (Tom Conway's first solo flight as the Falcon) while recovering from a hangover is disturbed by an exotic woman who's just come in through the bedroom window. She orders him to find her brother, much to the disgust of his girlfriend Jane Randolph who again is a rather unreporting newspaper reporter. That is the ruse to ensnare and frame him in a USD 250,000 War Bond robbery, his efforts to clear himself from the chasing cops and get the real baddies is the plot. The search takes him and Goldie via the Volunteer Knitters For America to a rather splendid (studio bound) Pinecrest Hotel, where it seems all of the guests are shifty about something and who deserve watching – even old RKO stock slapstick characters. Only downside: the murderer's alibi always struck me as technically pretty feeble. Favourite bits: the 5 second interchange between the hotel bellgirl, the Falcon checking in and the receptionist – an incredible lightness of touch! Also Inspector Cliff Clark's terse command to give Mr. Wong a bong and bring him along – though it wouldn't win praise from the pc brigade today.

Overall, a nice watch for fans of 40's b&w b features, one I hope to be spared to watch another 10 times – where's the Deluxe Complete Collection Edition DVD??

In this episode of the Falcon, Tom Lawrence is investigating a theft of war bonds and murder. Considering it was made during WWII, it isn't surprising that they added the patriotic angle--something that happened in other similar films, such as some of the Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan movies.

This is a pretty good Falcon movie that stars Tom Conway (real-life brother of George Sanders who had played the Falcon in several earlier films). While not his best of the series (for example, I liked THE FALCON AND THE CO-EDS and THE FALCON'S BROTHER just a bit more), it was enjoyable and engaged me. However, no matter how good this film was, I found myself comparing it to the earlier Sanders films again and again. While there is a lot of similarity between the actors (both physically and in their melodious voices), the earlier films seemed to have a bit more energy and charm--probably because by now the series seemed a bit formulaic and predictable. Still, for a B-detective series film from the era, it's slightly better than average and is definitely worth a watch.

By the way, the Harriet Hilliard who plays one of the ladies that turns the Falcon's head is the same Harriet from "The Ozzie and Harriet Show". While competent in the film, she didn't seem especially like the ladies the Falcon usually fell for or rescued.

In his first movie starring as the suave Falcon, Tom Conway is accused of murder and the theft of a quarter of a million dollars in war bonds. Besides Cliff Edwards and Richard Loo as his minions, there are the usual RKO starlets and Edgar Kennedy in a straight role as a puppeteer.

It's a fairly good little mystery from a story by Stuart Palmer and direction by Edward Dmytryk, and a limited number of sets that we've seen before: the hotel lobby, the pool, and so forth. The economy that this series was made with made it quite profitable for RKO, and it cleared almost $200,000 after expenses. It also have Edgar Kennedy a chance to do some straight acting. He was best known as a screen comic, beginning with Keystone, and having starred in his own series of shorts from RKO for ten years at this point. You may recognize him as the peanut seller in DUCK SOUP doing his patented slow burn. Here, he's definitely creepy.

This is the fifth Falcon film, the first with Tom Conway in the role, and the first with a major director, Ed Dmytryk. Consequently, artistic shots begin to appear: when someone pulls a gun on one occasion, Dmytryk cuts to a dramatic closeup of the gun barrel pointing at the camera. An ingenious tracking shot of Conway walking along the edge of a swimming pool talking to a woman who is swimming was replicated in 1985, 42 years later, in 'The Sure Thing' directed by Rob Reiner. The screenwriters of the previous film have been dumped because they did not provide enough humour, and this time humour is back, and plenty of it. Dialogue crackles again in top form. Unfortunately, Keye Luke as the butler is gone, so a lot is lost in that department. There are some splendid villains, and it is a good solid wartime espionage thriller, excellent B movie stuff. Conway is as urbane and smooth as his brother, and just as compulsive a girl-chaser. There are some wonderful gags, and the women swooning as Conway kisses them, or flocking to his arms asking for his help, are played for all they are worth. Wonderful fun and an intriguing mystery tale done with style.