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.

Okay Falcon entry, but nothing more. The plane crash with no one aboard makes a good opening grabber. So who was aboard and what happened. Too bad the narrative soon clogs up in convoluted fashion. As a result, the whodunit part is clouded over by congested secondary parts, such that the final reveal becomes somewhat anti-climactic.

Also, the programmer lacks needed verve from a largely unmotivated cast—Ward's ditsy southener tries but is more annoying than charming. And are we really supposed to believe the super-refined Falcon would choose her as a fiancé! Also, it looks like director Clemens simply filmed the script without style or mood.

What the film does have are a couple of engaging scenes. There's the crowded roller-skating rink using 'crack the whip' that sends the ultra-dignified Falcon flying, a humorous touch from a by-gone era. Then too, the Falcon playing Gene Autry on a run-away horse gave a stunt double, I expect, a good payday.

Look for minor notables among the supporting cast—Richard Martin (George Morley) who later played Tim Holt's sidekick Chito Rafferty from that cowboy series; Erford Gage (Evan Morley) from the Val Lewton horror series and one of the few actors killed in action in WWII; and the distinctive but uncredited Ian Wolfe (butler) from hundreds of RKO productions of the time.

All in all, it's a routine programmer that could have used a slimmed down narrative and cast to better fit the slender 65-minute runtime.

The Falcon films, both with George Sanders and Tom Conway in the lead role, are on the most part very enjoyable. There are some very good ones like the first two Sanders Falcon films and 'The Falcon Strikes Back'. At the same time there are a few lacklustre ones, with 'The Falcon in Danger' being one of the biggest examples.

Not unwatchable certainly. Tom Conway continues to thrive and enjoy himself as the title character, everything that Sanders brought to the role are also present in Conway's performance and with full impact. The music is lively enough, and on the most part the production values are slick and atmospheric. Cliff Clark is much better here than in his previous two Falcon films, where he suffered from poor writing that made his character a mugging buffoon and that James Gleason was (still is admittedly) sorely missed, here he's amusing at being befuddled and indignant.

It starts off well too, with a tense opening (pretty poor effects aside) that makes one wish that the rest of 'The Falcon in Danger' was just as good. The roller-skating scene is funny, Elaine Shepherd is alluring and fits well enough and Edward Gargan boasts the best comic moments.

On the other hand, any sense of danger and suspense is lost after the opening. The running time is too short, which has not always been a problem in a film series with short durations but it was less forgivable with so much crammed in and paced so frantically here. 'The Falcon in Danger' does suffer from trying to cram in and tell too much in a short space of time, which makes a lot of the mystery underdeveloped and confused, with almost all of it a long way from suspenseful, and a few scenes and transitions rushed. The script is full of red herrings and sudden revelations, a vast majority of which done rather unsubtly and out of nowhere, any surprises turn out even not to be all that surprising.

A lot of the mystery is forced to take a backseat to the romance, which is dull and lacks chemistry. A contender for the worst thing about 'The Falcon in Danger' is the exceedingly annoying performance of Amelita Ward, if there was an award for the worst or most annoying performance in a Falcon film Ward's a very strong contender.

Summing up, starts off well and definitely watchable, but the rest of the film doesn't match up to the promising standard of the opening, being rushed, over-stuffed and confused and Ward really grates. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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.

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.