La maison des sept faucons

This is not exactly an excellent drama but it sure is very entertaining. It has elements that remind me of Bogart and features a well written plot and believable characters. I'd happily watch this one every couple of years as, although the plot-line is fairly simple,. it's also quite good. All in all a very entertaining drama definitely upscale from it's B-movie moniker.

"The House of Seven Hawks" would have been much better had it been produced by Robert Taylor's old employer, MGM.

Instead, the film turned out to be quite a disappointment for Taylor, a man who had been a major star for two decades. I will say this; the opening is quite intriguing. Taylor's character agrees to transport a man from England to the Continent by boat, and does so. After arrival, however, he soon discovers that this simple business deal is quite a bit more complicated than what he expected.

Sadly, the film does not take advantage of this clever opening. From that point on, it is rather routine.

As others have suggested, this ends up being a rather lackluster B effort not close to the level of the films Taylor made for MGM. In that regard, this movie is similar to the 1959 efforts of Alan Ladd, a man whose great success in the 1940s and early 1950s was followed by some very mediocre productions. (In Ladd's case, the actor himself was largely to blame due to very poor judgment regarding choice of film projects.)

My admiration for Robert Taylor has grown over time. He was a better actor than many gave him credit for. (I recommend his performances in "Bataan" and "Johnny Eager.") Sadly, this particular movie, though watchable, did nothing to enhance his reputation.

John Nordley (Robert Taylor) sails his boat out of the British port of Baymouth. The authorities suspects him of smuggling to foreign ports. He is hired by older Dutch gentleman Anselm. Anselm surprises him with the destination of Holland without the authorities' knowledge but with a large payment. Anselm dies in his sleep. Upon arriving in Holland, Nordley is met by Anselm's daughter who quickly rummages through the dead body. Nordley had already hidden away the money and other stuff and she finds nothing. At the port, he is met by the police who takes him into custody. The dead man turns out to be police inspector Sluiter and his daughter Constanta was not the one who got on his boat.

This is a B-movie trying to be a cheap Hitchcock thriller. Taylor is treating the situation too lightly. The humor is too slight. I do like the starting premise but the story doesn't build tension. Taylor never lets on that he's in danger. The characters are mostly one dimensional. I would like for the two women to look a lot different. This is an easy thriller and it needs more tension.

The year before this film came out Robert Taylor's long term contract came to an end with MGM. His was the longest contract to a studio in film history. There was a clause in his release which gave MGM the option for two more films. With The House Of The Seven Hawks, Taylor did the first of his two films to fulfill that commitment.

It was a film like The House Of The Seven Hawks that probably made Robert Taylor think about television as a venue. It's a routine mystery adventure film that would have been done years earlier by MGM's B picture unit.

The House Of The Seven Hawks casts Taylor as an American expatriate running a charter schooner service over in Great Britain. A man charters Taylor's boat and asks him to take him to the Netherlands. On the way the man collapses and dies and upon identifying him through his ID as a Dutch police inspector, Taylor feels he's stepped in a nice bucket of fertilizer. Especially since he had no clearance to leave English waters.

Now the film would have been over if Taylor had simply left things untouched, but did his duty as a citizen and just reported the death. But no, he finds some cryptic directions taped to the dead man's abdomen and thinks there might be something in it for him. That got him into even a bigger mess involving a gang of former Nazis and a pair of beautiful women.

The villains in this film are taken right out of the Maltese Falcon with Eric Pohlman and David Kossoff doing their best as a pair of continental Greenstreet and Lorres. As for beautiful woman number one, Linda Christian is a gal working her own agenda the same way Mary Astor was doing. There are some elements in the story line that could have come from The Maltese Falcon.

Beautiful woman number two is Nicole Maurey, daughter of the dead police inspector who thinks Taylor might have done her father in for a while. Donald Wolfit is the Dutch police inspector who takes the case over from Nicole's dad and keeps a close tab on Taylor.

Stealing every scene he's in is professional informer Philo Hauser who makes a living at the art of the doublecross.

MGM did not even bother to invest The House Of The Seven Hawks with color cinematography. Certainly that would have captured some nice Dutch countryside.

The film was the sixth of seven films Robert Taylor did for director Richard Thorpe and the last one for they did for MGM. Seven films with the same director might normally qualify them as a screen team. Thorpe did three of Taylor's best heroic films, Ivanhoe, Knights Of The Round Table, and Quentin Durward. He also did from Taylor's halcyon days at MGM, The Crowd Roars and Tip On A Dead Jockey. They would team up again for Killers of Kilimanjaro, Taylor's next film which was released by Columbia. My guess is that Thorpe and Taylor were a compatible pair and that's why MGM assigned him Taylor's pictures.

Not even Robert Taylor's devoted fans would say this was one of his best roles. MGM was simply trying to work out a commitment and didn't invest much in The House Of The Seven Hawks. I'll bet the inducement of shooting in Europe and maybe taking along Ursula Thiess to visit her family on the continent was reason enough to do this film. And Taylor never balked too much at doing anything.

A European trip was a good enough reason for accepting any film offer. Still The House Of The Seven Hawks will never be ranked by anyone as one of Robert Taylor's top ten.

This is a good 'rainy afternoon film'. It is harmless, entertaining and well made. It was directed by old pro Richard Thorpe. Robert Taylor plays an independent sailboat owner based on the southern coast of England (with the script explaining why he is an American) who 'takes people where they want to go'. One day a mysterious man with a briefcase who calls himself Mr. Anselm books his boat for a coastal tour. After setting out, he says he wants instead to go to a port in the Netherlands. Taylor is not supposed to do foreign trips without permission from his harbour master, but as he is offered a substantial amount of money by the man (whose briefcase is stuffed with cash), he agrees. The man says he is Dutch and hence does not normally get seasick, but on this occasion he says he does not feel well at all, and goes to lie down in his cabin. Later when Taylor takes him a cup of tea, he finds the man lying dead on his bed. We later discover that he has been murdered by someone tampering with his insulin supply before boarding, as he was a diabetic. Taylor uses the little key hanging round the man's neck on a chain to open the briefcase, and takes the cash owing to him, leaving the rest intact and shutting the briefcase. In using the key, he accidentally discovers that the man has taped to his chest, under his shirt, a small envelope containing a little hand-drawn map. He puts it back and goes back on deck, to steer into the Dutch harbour. Before he can get there, however, a pretty girl comes up in a small motorboat saying that she is the dead man's daughter. Taylor breaks the news to her and she says she wants to look at her father, and goes down below. Taylor follows her after a while and finds her ransacking the cabin, looking urgently for something. She has pried open the briefcase and is searching everywhere. She runs away, gets back in her boat and goes back into the harbour. Taylor looks and sees that the map is still taped to the man's chest, and that she has missed it. He takes it and hides it in his private stowaway with his gun. He later discovers that the girl was an impostor and was not the dead man's daughter at all. The intrigue deepens as Taylor is taken into custody by the Dutch police and removed to the Hague, where a senior Dutch police inspector is played by a gruff Donald Wolfit. He informs Taylor that the dead man was really a Mr Sluiter, who was head of the Hague Police Force. He had made a secret trip to England as part of a confidential investigation. The plot thickens and thickens and thickens, with villains turning up, some unctuous and rich, some thuggish. The fake daughter gets murdered, and there is menace all around. David Kossof is particularly brilliant as a supporting actor, playing a character named Willem Dekker. He adds a great deal of liveliness to the film. This is all good fun and well recommended.