Le Faucon en péril

A small airplane comes in to land at an airport but it drifts off course and crashes. The police investigate but find the plane empty – totally empty. The plane was meant to have a couple of wealthy industrialists on board as well as a shipment of money. When the daughter of one of the men (Nancy Palmer) gets a ransom note she goes to Tom Lawrence for help – much to the annoyance of Tom's newest and suspicious fiancé Bonnie Caldwell. Tom takes the case anyway and arranges the drop off of the ransom money to be a sting operation – it fails but he gets a number plate that starts him on the trail of the kidnappers and the truth about how passengers and crew seemed to vanish in mid-air.

Having taken the reigns from his half-brother George, Tom Conway continues as the new Falcon with this intriguing and rather enjoyable little film that only suffers from not being as clear as it really could have been. The film opens with a plane landing empty with the crew and passengers missing; it is an interesting opening that is not reduced by the poor effects on the plane.

From here on the simple premise gets a bit more confused as it brings in various threads; it is still interesting but it isn't as gripping as it could have been for much of the middle section – but it gets better towards the end as things get clearer. It isn't anything special but the story does compare to the other Falcon stories.

Where it doesn't compare is in the cast, which has seen a lot of changes over the past few films. With Sanders gone, Conway struggles and he really can't fill the shoes of the Falcon. His performance is OK but he is not really memorable and doesn't command the attention in the same way Sanders did. Ward fills the usual 'fiancé in tow' role but she is annoying and unnecessary. Shepard is a bit better, mainly because she feels like part of the story and not part of the formula. Clark keeps on with his role and he is pretty good – the memory of O'Hara is gone and Clark just fills the same material well enough. A wise choice was to drop the comedy sidekick to the Falcon, meaning that the story doesn't need a side issue for him (Goldy) to do. Instead the comic relief here is in the form of Gargan as Bates. None of them really make an impression even if they are all OK – meaning that there isn't really anyone holding the attention of stealing scenes, giving the material an average feel at times.

Overall this is an OK entry in the series in terms of story but it is a poor one in regards total value. The delivery is a bit messy and the characters are all just the formula rolled out again but, with no really good performances they stand out as just that – formula. The end product is OK but nothing special and the end of the series (if not already definite due to Sanders departure) was now not very far away at all.

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.

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 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.

A plane lands with nobody aboard, making a crash landing on automatic pilot. The police come to The Falcon (TOM CONWAY) for assistance in the mystery of the vanishing crew but he's reluctant to help them. That is, until a pretty girl tells him her father was aboard the plane and wants him to help her. His girlfriend, a Southern gal played by AMELITA WARD, persuades the Falcon to take the case.

The plot thickens when another damsel in distress shows up, the niece of a wealthy man who needs to find her uncle and reveals a blackmail plot over missing securities that makes her afraid there's been a kidnapping. All of this happens within the first fifteen minutes, so you can see how crammed with events the plot gets in a very short time.

Despite all the red herrings, I did manage to put my finger on the right suspect long before the end. Too much plotting spoils enjoyment of this one with too much cramming of plots and sub-plots in brief running time.

Trivia note: AMELITA WARD, who plays the annoying and whining Southern woman that Conway manages to get rid of, was the body double for Olivia de Havilland's twin sister in THE DARK MIRROR ('46).