Barbados Quest

Given that this film was made for distribution by RKO Radio maybe it is not surprising that this comes out as a rather pale imitation of The Saint and Falcon films made by RKO in the 1940s,in which Tom Conway appeared.He is called "the Duke" and has a comedy sidekick who is feebly played by Michael Balfour>In fact I recall that one of the Saint pictures had a plot revolving around stamps.Here every cliché in the book is thrown in.Bodies that disappear witnesses who do a runner.Everything about this production feels tired and second rate not least Tom Conway who is clearly just going through the motions.Merely a time passer.

"Barbados Quest" (also called "Murder on Approval") is a low budget B-movie made in the UK. It stars the ever-suave Tom Conway (brother of George Sanders) as a guy much like the guy he played in the Falcon series in the 1940s...a private detective and problem-solver.

The film begins with a man buying an incredibly rare stamp...one of only four known in the world. However, soon after he learns two other people recently purchased one of these rare stamps....and it makes him wonder if his might be a forgery. But instead of calling the police, he contacts Tom Martin (Conway) and asks him to fly to London to investigate. Why? The man is worried that his reputation as an expert philatalist will be in jeopardy if folks learn he bought a forgery.

Once in England, Tom comes across all sorts of rogues who claim to know nothing about the stamp. However, over time it becomes obvious that there are plates for making more of these 'rare' stamps...and it's a group effort! Can Tom manage to get anyone to believe him? After all, the local police assume he's up to no good and won't help in the least.

This is a good B-movie with a solid story, a nice lead and decent dialog. Worth seeing though certainly not a must-see film.

This B-film from producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman is very much in the style of their later television success The Saint. Indeed, Tom Conway had played The Saint on American radio and was best known for The Falcon, an identical character, in a series of 1940s B-films he had inherited from his brother George Sanders, who had also donned the halo. Like those films, this British effort was distributed by RKO and sticks so closely to the formula that it is almost indistinguishable from a Falcon film, but with names changed and the setting switched to England, and the plot concerning stamps - forged, rare and stolen.

Conway is as good as ever as Tom 'Duke' Martin, with his Errol Flynn-like good looks and suave, twinkly-eyed demeanour - though, at 51, was beginning to show his age. As with the Falcon series, he has a stout, former crook for a comical sidekick, now played by reliable B-film regular Michael Balfour. Elsewhere, Brian Worth as Blake is conceited, vaguely sinister and reminiscent of a young Dennis Price, while John Horsley is excellent in another of his many detective portrayals.

However, while the counterfeit racket is a neat one and a car chase perks things up in the middle, the plot is somewhat convoluted and the viewer must keep track of which is the real stamp. The villain is more or less known from the outset and the interest comes from how Tom makes sense of it all, so there is little consistent suspense. I saw it twice before I understood everything, so can only imagine how cinema-goers felt on seeing it only once.

Such quibbles aside, this is a functional B-film and a must-see for fans of The Falcon. A sequel, Breakaway, was released the next year. Both films were a success, mostly due to the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies they were paired with, and a television series was apparently even mooted, though did not materialise.

BARBADOS QUEST is the first of two outings for Tom Conway's ageing private eye 'Duke' Martin, a guy who can never sit still but must go around solving crimes wherever he sees them. BREAKAWAY was the sequel which followed shortly although it's not as good as this movie. BARBADOS QUEST sounds like an interesting precursor to Bond, promising globetrotting and an exotic location, but unfortunately the Barbados of the title in reality refers to a rare stamp.

Yes, it's a crime film built around stamp collecting, and as genteel and sedate as it sounds despite a handful of fight scenes being shoehorned into the plot. The first half of this film has a genuine sense of mystery about it as the viewer isn't sure what's happened and isn't sure what's going on either. In the second half, the motivations of the entire cast are quite clear and things slow down considerably as a result with the sense of mystery lost.

Conway is an acceptable lead despite being too long in the tooth to successfully convince as the protagonist. Delphi Lawrence does a good job of playing the glamorous woman involved in the case, but the real scene stealer is Michael Balfour who excels in his 'comedy sidekick' role. The final mention goes to Brian Worth, who channels some of the spirit of a youthful Dennis Price as a mysterious figure involved in the proceedings. BARBADOS QUEST is no masterpiece, but for a film about stamp collecting it's surprisingly efficient.

A thriller based around stamp-collecting doesn't sound too promising, though I do remember the Leslie Charteris short-story about a rare stamp, later adapted for a TV episode of The Saint - who had been played earlier on radio by Tom Conway, seen here in one of his few starring roles.

As the all-important stamp in the present film was an early Barbados issue, I would have thought that a sub-plot about a duplicate specimen popping up somewhere on the island would have provided some welcome contrast to the monotonous grey London of this production. But as it is, 'Barbados Quest' is just a silly catchpenny title, sensibly changed to 'Murder on Approval', referencing the stamp-trader's terms of business, known to every schoolboy collector.

If you see Conway as a poor man's George Sanders, that is exactly what he was - the younger brother, whose career would presently disappear down the neck of a bottle. He really does nothing special here, even when complemented by his reasonably comic sidekick Michael Balfour. But of course, this was 1955, when almost anything would do.

In an industry that rests on distinguishing the real from the counterfeit, we may have more reason than usual to question people's motives, and I could name two pillars of respectability who are not quite what they seem, but I prefer to stay away from the spoiler game.

In some ways it's just a product of its era, with that giveaway cliché "And now, if you'll excuse me..." popping up three times. And we can't reveal the climax, except that a couple of good guys burst in at the last moment, as in the standard endings of 'Murder She Wrote'.