The Saint's Vacation

Hugh Sinclair is The Saint, Simon Templar, in "The Saint's Vacation," a 1941 film also starring Sally Gray, Cecil Parker and Arthur Macrae. Besides Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy on television, the Saint has been played by Sinclair, Louis Hayward and George Sanders (that I've seen). I liked Hayward's smoothness, Sanders' turn of a phrase, and I like Sinclair's cool, casual, take it as it comes attitude. He doesn't have the dry wit of Sanders' Simon, but like Saints before him, nothing fazes him either. He also doesn't whistle the familiar "Saint" tune, which I kind of missed.

Now the Saint is veddy veddy British as the productions were moved over to the UK, and Simon is working with a friend (Arthur Macrae) who's afraid of his shadow. This time the plot concerns a highly sought after music box - where have we heard that before? And, as usual, people will kill to get their hands on it.

Sally Gray is pretty and energetic as a reporter who accompanies Simon as she tries to get a good story. Evidently she doesn't realize that if you like Sherlock Holmes and The Lady Vanishes, this variation on a theme is old stuff. Very pleasant film.

Entertaining little low-budget entry from Great Britain, it has HUGH SINCLAIR as "The Saint" involved immediately in getting hold of a music box that holds some sort of war secret--although the war itself is never actually named and kept strictly out of sight. SALLY GRAY makes a pleasant female lead, a newspaper reporter who is a lot braver than The Saint's sidekick, played by ARTHUR MACRAE in a most annoying manner. He makes Dr. Watson's Nigel Bruce look like a brain surgeon.

With some obvious studio backgrounds subbing for Switzerland locales, this caper moves along at a fast pace, filling every one of its one hour running time with story development that never lets up.

CECIL PARKER is a smooth villain, but the story has all the familiar ingredients we've come to expect in any Saint outing. The McGuffin is clearly the music box and the plot is kept simple with everyone's concentration on getting hold of it.

Summing up: Passes the time quickly and pleasantly, but Hugh Sinclair is no replacement for George Sanders, no matter how British he is.

I hadn't seen this one for nearly 20 years until tonight on cable, and an excellent watch it was at 58 minutes long. Necessarily then a fast paced thriller, the story lifted straight off The Lady Vanishes with Cecil Parker in both but having more immoral fibre in this as the Nazi. At least, I think he was on the Nazis side - nothing is made clear until the very end when this McGuffin is breezily explained by Felix Aylmer. Dressed to Kill provided another variant of this plot 5 years later for Holmes and Watson.

Basically everyone's after a mysterious box and prepared to kill for it. In one scene Parker coldly shoots dead two unarmed train guards for hindering him in his quest, even though we the audience know the whole episode was a deliberate false trail laid by (the apparently uncaring) Templar to throw the baddies off his track.

All it really needed was Charters and Caldicott in one of the foreign hotels arguing about cricket to complete the similarity to TLV. However, the former packed in some rather poor model shots for buildings etc whereas in TSV we're treated to some splendid Gothic Bavarian sets, of hotels, castles and woodland. I wonder what period film they were used for first? With all faults, still a nice little film.

"The Saint's Vacation" moves along briskly. The fast pace enhances what would otherwise be a pretty typical B-mystery of the era.

The incandescent Sally Gray is at her peak here and she is the main reason you don't want to miss this movie. Wow- blonde hair, vivaciousness, overall screen presence, but mostly her magnificent voice. One of the best screen voices (female or male) ever to grace the screen in 1940 or any era. You can't take your eyes (or ears) off her. She was truly one of the all time screen babes.

The film also features the "inevitable" Cecil Parker (I call him inevitable because of his participation in so many good British films such as "The Lady Vanishes").

Sinclair was no way comparable to the rakish George Sanders but is adequate as the Saint here, livened as he is by being forced to go at the fast pace required in this story. A competent actor.

You should catch this non-classic because of the vibrant screen presence of Sally Gray. For sheer screen "Presence"- that often alluded to but seldom describable factor- whatever it is Ms. Gray had it.

Saint's Vacation, The (1941)

** (out of 4)

Seventh film in RKO's series has George Sanders being replaced by Hugh Sinclair. This time out The Saint is battling a man over a mysterious box, which contains some sort of secret code. This is a rather strange entry in the series as I found it to have one of the best stories but the production is so poor that this really kills anything positive in the film. What really kept getting under my skin was the incredibly bad editing, which really stands out to be among the worst I've ever seen. There's one scene where The Saint must fight two guys while his sidekick and a female reporter (Sally Gray) are watching. The way this thing is edited is so poorly done and the bad music selections really made me laugh when the scene was of course going for suspense. As for Sinclair, he really doesn't make a very good leading man. I wasn't too impressed with Sanders in the role but he was certainly more fitting than his replacement. I'm not sure if he should get all the blame for being so stiff because the entire film pretty much plays out that way. There's never any real energy built by the director and in the end the movie just comes off pretty bland.