Devil's Cargo

The Falcon returns...sort of. Not really. Two years after the RKO Falcon series ended, Poverty Row studio Film Classics began their own series. There's not much this has in common with the George Sanders/Tom Conway films. The Falcon, now played by John Calvert, has a new name: Michael Watling. Gone is the comic relief sidekick. Here the Falcon has a dog he talks to. Also gone are charm, wit, adventure, and everything else that worked in the previous series. This is just a generic detective tale, made on cheap sets with a forgettable lead backed up by a cast of actors who had seen better days. The RKO series was great. Even if the plots weren't always riveting, you could always rely on Sanders and Conway to deliver and the production values were usually very nice. This is just a big nothing burger. Sadly there are two more 'fake Falcon' films after this.

This is the 14th Falcon film, and the first of three starring John Calvert as a detective based on Michael Arlen's character the Falcon. After these three, the Falcon films ended. In my review of the final one, I shall give a chronological list of all 16. The title of this film has no relevance to the film whatever, as there is no devil and no cargo. Nor is the film anything to do with ships and the sea, as 'cargo' might imply. (There was a silent film in 1925 called THE DEVIL'S CARGO, but it is apparently lost, no surviving person appears to have seen it, and it can have had no connection with this one.) This film is a pastiche, very badly acted, extremely low budget, and should not really have been called a Falcon film. The producers presumably paid something for the right to use the name, but there all resemblances end. John Calvert appears to have some admirers, and I would not wish to depress them too much, but let's put it like this: there are two kinds of charm, natural charm and practised charm. George Sanders and Tom Conway (real-life brothers) had the former and John Calvert makes an attempt at the latter. Those of us who like the real thing can only be annoyed. However, he does his best, and really tries, so let us be merciful and not turn it off. The film does have about a dozen instances of snappy dialogue, such as this exchange: Falcon: 'Are you going somewhere?' Dame: 'My maid let the canary out and I'm going looking for it.' Not the highest calibre gags, but some are amusing and witty. As for the mystery story, it has some excellent twists and shows creative planning. Undemanding viewers of old mystery movies will probably enjoy this one. The idea of the mysterious key to a locker containing a bomb which explodes and kills the inquisitive enquirer who opens it is a new angle. (Were there Taliban in 1948?) And it genuinely is difficult in this film to guess whodunit, since the man who confesses at the beginning of the film is not guilty of killing the stiff. Also, the means of delivering a fatal poison to a man in a jail cell is novel and ingenious. I must remember that the next time my psychopathic neighbour is arrested, or perhaps when a certain crooked accountant finally gets locked up. When one thinks about it, there are so many candidates! Just joking. It so quaint that one man when questioned by the police in this film is asked why he carried a revolver to meet the murdered man (but didn't use it), he says as casually and nonchalantly as can be: 'I always carry a revolver.' And he is not challenged further. That was then and this is now. Ah, those were the days when a bulge in a pocket really did not mean one was pleased to see Mae West. There is a pathetic attempt to liven this film up by giving John Calvert a dog called Brains Trust (the real dog who plays the dog had the same name, funny that). But John Calvert is no William Powell, as Lloyd Bentsen might have said, and Brains Trust only knows how to bark, pant, and shake hands. That's it. Well, two more to go.

A man called 'Lucky' is murdered, proving that nicknames are often misleading. Paul Marion visits John Calvert, who's playing the Falcon in this flick, gives him $500 and a key to give to his lawyer if he's not found not guilty of murdering Lucky, before he turns himself in for killing him. Complications ensue.

It starts out looking like a 1930s movie, with performers like Rochelle Hudson, Tom Kennedy, Lyle Talbot, Theodore von Eltz and Roscoe Karns in the supporting cast. Calvert plays the Falcon with a pencil-thin mustache, a Ronald Colman imitation that comes and goes, and sleight of hand magic tricks. He entered the movies as a magician, doing hand doubles for actors like Gable, and here was his shot at a lead, albeit in an independent movie.

The script is a pretty good one, but Calvert demonstrates that it takes more than a pencil-thin mustache to be a movie star. He made two more Falcon movies within a year, then a couple more supporting roles. By 1956, he was gone from the movies, back to being a stage magician.

If Calvert's career in the movies didn't last, Calvert himself did. He died in 2013 at the age of 102.

The handsome and urbane John Calvert gives a tough yet breezy performance as Hollywood private eye Michael Waring - code named "The Falcon" . Although Calvert possessed a polished and charismatic screen presence and appeared in nearly thirty films for RKO and Columbia his first love remained the art of magic through which he became an international variety star.

This is a real bargain basement production and there's one particularly curious quirk that's worth listening for. Whenever any of the supporting cast refer to the last name of Calvert's character it's obvious that changes have been made in the post production process. Specifically, it seems that the name "Waring" has been cut out on each occasion and substituted with "Watling". The obvious question is .. why ? Possibly some kind of copyright issue ?

Gay and Tom Laurence (real life brothers George Sanders and Tom Conway) were the Falcon in the early 1940s. So why is a guy named 'Wattling' now appearing in some poverty row series where HE is called the Falcon as well?! In addition to not being the Falcon, this guy acts nothing like the suave and sophisticated Falcon of old. The new guy has a cute dog(!?) and talks incessantly--and he's just nothing like the originals.

As for the rest of the film, it's bizarre and nothing like the old Falcon plots either. Some knucklehead comes to Wattling and claims he murdered someone (so why didn't he just go to the cops first?!?!?). But, soon after, the admitted killer is himself murdered in prison--poisoned. So, Wattling appoints himself a some sort of avenging angel and spends the rest of the film trying to figure out who was behind all this--as well as to figure out what the man was REALLY planning before he died.

While the plot has some nice twists, the characters are just all wrong, the acting is terrible and I wouldn't even recommend this to Falcon freaks--as he's just a shadow of the originals at best. Dreadful on many levels.