Le Faucon en péril

Another Falcon adventure featuring a murder mystery, beautiful women, and bumbling police detectives. This one has a plane land by autopilot with nobody on board! Two industrialists are missing, along with the pilot. Then two ransom notes are sent and the daughter of one of the missing men naturally seeks out The Falcon for help. Cliff Clark and Ed Gargan provide a strong police presence as the cops who always seem to be one step behind hero Tom Lawrence. There are three beautiful women. Amelita Ward is Bonnie Caldwell, the Falcon's super annoying fiancé, who seems to scream every line. Amelita later married Leo Gorcey. Jean Brooks plays Iris Fairchild, and comes off best. She was already drinking heavily when TFID was made, but it doesn't show in her work here. Elaine Shepard plays Nancy Palmer. Aside from bringing The Falcon into the case, she doesn't have much to do here. Richard Martin, AKA Chito Rafferty, appears as a gun-toting hood who menaces the hero a time or two. The fun is trying to figure out who murderer is. I had it guessed wrong right up until the end. As always, the final scene features a beautiful girl rushing into The Falcon's arms and begging him to come solve her mystery, which introduces the next Falcon feature film. That next one is The Falcon and the Co-Eds, and both Jean Brooks and Amelita Ward are in that one, although in different roles. So glad that Bonnie Caldwell character was phased out.

I like Tom Conway as The Falcon, and this was a very good mystery. What was annoying was the presence of The Falcon's southern fiancée, who never shut up through the whole picture, even during crucial moments. Hard to believe that such a sophisticated character as the Falcon would have put up with her for more than five minutes.

The rest of the movie is actually quite good and a neat mystery about money and people disappearing out of a flying plane. There's a very funny roller-skating scene, funny because of the way it was filmed. The Falcon on roller skates? Who would have believed it? Despite its shortcomings, it's an entertaining movie if you can ignore that fiancé.

The sixth Falcon movie (third starring Conway) has Tom Lawrence investigating how two industrialists disappeared from a plane mid-flight. The opening crash landing of the plane is pretty cool. This one doesn't match up with the continuity of the last film. Falcon has a Southern belle fiancée now? What happened to his reporter girlfriend? Amelita Ward, who plays the fiancée, would return in the next picture playing a different role. Elaine Shepard and Jean Brooks play the other two pretty women the Falcon flirts with. Clarence Kolb is fun. I could listen to his voice all day. Pretty good mystery this time around. I would have rated this a 7 but the annoying fiancée gets old fast. The movie would've been improved greatly by cutting her part out entirely.

Another Falcon mystery, starring the usual crew, Tom Conway and Jean Brooks. When a plane crash lands, they find it completely empty. A mystery, since a millionaire is now missing. The other passengers were left behind at the last stop. The coppers track down the falcon to assist, and find him in a speakeasy, of course. When the kidnappers demand ransom, the falcon tries to figure out who is behind it all. And how is the antique store involved in this? You'll recognize Clarence Kolb, as the kidnap-ee... he was always the wise old senator, or the rich old uncle. This one goes all over the place, but it's watchable. Except for the annoying, screeching girlfriend (Amelita Ward) she's yackety yack the whole film. Directed by the usual Bill Clemens. This one is an RKO shortie, at 69 minutes. A roller skating rink? Really??

Tom Conway, playing the Saint knock-off his real life brother George Sanders abandoned to him, is actually in danger: of getting married. He aso has a fine little mystery to solve, when a plane sets down at the airport with no one aboard.

RKO actually paid for some good writing for Conway's series; this one is credited to Craig Rice and Fred Niblo Jr. RKO stocked it liberally with starlets, and there's the always watchable Clarence Kolb around as an 'industrialist' near the center of the story. Another Falcon movie was the first to use a Raymond Chandler story as its plot basis. The results were pretty good mysteries and some nice cheesecake. This one lives up to that undemanding standard for a second feature.