The Falcon in Mexico

Something happened to the Falcon on his flight down to Mexico. He was never the same after he landed.

For the first 15 minutes or so of this movie -- set in a large U.S. city -- everything is terrific. The Falcon meets two beautiful women, commits two minor crimes, finds a corpse, gets wrongly accused of murder, escapes from custody and learns that something mysterious is going on south of the border. It doesn't all happen in exactly that order, but there's plenty of fast-paced fun.

But once the Falcon and one of the women fly to Mexico, the excitement levels off. The plot slows to a crawl. Events, including murders, seem almost random, and even the characters appear bored at time. At one point, the Falcon warns a Mexican gentleman that somebody may try to kill his daughter. The man shrugs off the tip and assures our hero that Mexico is a very safe place. He's not even curious about where the threat comes from!

The problem with the main part of this movie is that there's so much Mexico, there's no room left for mystery. There's travelogue-style footage of lakes and mountains, and some of it is very good. There are songs in Spanish, performances of masked Mexican dancers and shots of Mexican fishermen at work. There are even stereotypical "comic" Mexicans who talk like Speedy Gonzales. But there's no suspense, and the ending is very weak.

Considering when it was made, "The Falcon in Mexico" probably had a public relations component. During World War II, the U.S. government encouraged Hollywood to portray Latin America in a favorable light. But in a mystery movie, an exotic setting goes only so far. After a crackerjack start, this little whodunit is ultimately unsatisfying. It's at its weakest where it should have been strongest.

after 16 minutes anyway. Not that it detracts from a nice little comedy-mystery, but this was an even cheaper affair than usual from RKO as they used up a lot of stock rustic Mexican background film to lilting music here while the main characters glided or drove about in front. Tom Conway as the Falcon looked as handsome and debonair as ever (no. 9/13 – I don't count those last 3 non-RKO efforts with John Calvert), and had to do without the comedy double act of Clark and Gargan from now on.

Investigation of a painting painted by a dead man (with an art gallery eerily similar to the one in Woman In The Window) leads to murder and theft; the Falcon is chased by the cops while he's chasing the baddies all the way into deepest Mexico. The dead painter's daughter was played chockful of feminine intuition by Martha Vickers, next step for her was the cute Big Sleep. She also uttered my favourite line from all of the Falcon films – "My father lived at this inn while he was alive" – wonderful stuff! Nestor Paiva played a helpful ambiguous peasant and Joseph Vitale a rather unhelpful serious dancer, some of their best stuff was to come later with Paramount. The only downer was the climax could've been handled with a little more sensitivity, but in these pics time was money!

Another excellent and engrossing Falcon outing for the cognoscenti, serious people shouldn't waste their valuable time.

Never far from women or trouble, Tom Lawrence meets both when he meets Dolores Ybarra trying to get into a door and recover a painting she did. Helping her, Lawrence realises he was duped and that the painting is of her, not by her. These trifling issues are put to one side when they discover a body in the building. The girl flees and, suspected of the murder (as usual), Lawrence does too. The problem with the painting is that the painter actually died 15 years earlier, but yet the portrait must have been done recently. Lawrence seeks out the artist's daughter Barbara, who reveals a mystery around her father's death and the two head to Mexico to investigate further.

After being Out West, the film series continues its attempts to freshen things up by "being places" rather than doing things. In this case we have a lazy travelogue that takes us to Mexico with lots of backdrops and footage (with supposedly a famous source!). The mystery starts out well enough and does offer intrigue to a point but it is pretty much lost in the delivery, which seems more interesting in providing a lot of footage of Mexico instead. This bothered me a bit because I was interested by the set up but this waned as I realised that the film itself wasn't that fussed. Berke's direction is fine I'm sure but he is continually overshadowed by the stock footage (supposedly shot by Orson Welles) which regularly takes centre stage. The film also features a couple of songs (a common filler in b-movie world), they aren't much cop here but do add a sanitised flavour of Mexico.

Conway is not as smooth as he was in some other of the Falcon films. He is still recognisable as the same character but it does feel like he is going through the motions somewhat with this one. He lacks much in the way of support here as well as his regular comic companions of the police and Goldie/Lefty are absent. Instead we have a bit of life from Paiva in a good sidekick character. Maris, Vickers, Currier, Callejo and others all do so-so jobs but nobody has much conviction about anything – probably not helped by the material.

Overall then a fairly uninspiring entry in the series that continues the gimmick of the location from Out West. The stock footage is all well and good but the mystery becomes slack and uninteresting all too quickly.

"The Falcon in Mexico" is a 1944 entry into "The Falcon" series, by now starring Tom Conway. In this story, Tom Lawrence (The Falcon) is in Mexico investigating the possibility that a dead artist might not be so dead after all, after he sees the model for one of the artist's portraits. The artist has been dead 15 years, but if that's the case, this woman has discovered the secret of eternal youth - until she winds up dead. Did I mention the portrait looks like a paint by numbers? Martha Vickers plays the artist's daughter, who keeps "seeing" her father. Mona Maris is her remarried stepmother who dances in a Mexican club with her new husband.

The movie is okay, with an abrupt ending, which isn't unusual in these films, and the movie seems like an ad for visiting Mexico. Supposedly some of the footage is from the Orson Welles' debacle "It's All True." If so, I'm glad RKO found good use for it.

This is the ninth Falcon film, and a particularly good one. It contains some very good second unit material shot in Mexico, so there must have been a large budget for that, as it must have taken at least two or three weeks on location. It took a lot of editing to intercut all that with the actors back home in the studio. Tom Conway is in fine form, and there is some crackling dialogue as usual: 'Are you following me around?' 'I've been doing nothing else since we first met.' No prizes for figuring out who said that. There are excellent performances from two Hispanic actors, Fernando Alvarado is a charming little Mexican boy, and Nestor Paiva is excellent in a major supporting role. Martha Vickers is suitably alluring and ambiguous as a typical Falcon heroine. One would like to have some time alone with her in her dressing room (just for research purposes, of course). The plot is solid, a truly puzzling mystery this time, with so many possible villains that the fingers on both hands seem hardly sufficient. This is an excellent unpretentious B picture, just the sort of thing one wants in the Falcon series.