Devil's Cargo

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.

They probably should have stopped making Falcon movies when George Sanders and Tom Conway had finished their runs with the franchise. Hard to watch the Falcon become a shell of his old self. Spending more time with his dog than the ladies, and driving a Studebaker. The script may be okay, but it has a low-budget B Movie feel to it.

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 ?

This was the first of three films made by the small "Film Classics" company in 1948-49 starring actor-magician John Calvert as The Falcon, and it's very much unlike the latter two films. In this one, Calvert does magic tricks at various times throughout the movie (!!) AND his co-star is a dog named Brain Trust (!!!) who is listed as playing "himself." Calvert actually talks to the dog in some scenes. Perhaps the dog was a nod to the successful Thin Man films, but fortunately the dog routine was dropped in the latter two films, as were the magic tricks (which are a pleasant distraction,actually!). The film starts, and ends, with Calvert sitting in his bathtub! In the first scene, a man named Ramon Delgado comes to see The Falcon and confesses that he killed a man last night because the man was involved with his wife. Delgado feels that the killing was in self-defense and asks the Falcon to help him turn himself in to the police and see that his rights are respected. Of course, as this is a murder mystery, things are obviously not as simple as that, and the plot unfolds in a fascinating way. As in the other films in the series, the resolution is unexpected and quite exciting. This film was directed by John Link, a journeyman who mostly worked as an editor, and it also features some nice location shooting in 1948 L.A. A fine supporting cast of veterans--Roscoe Karns as the police lt., Rochelle Hudson as the seductive Mrs. Delgado, Theodore Van Eltz as a seedy attorney, Lyle Talbot as a mysterious "business man",

and comedian Tom Kennedy, who often played a dim-witted copy, as a dim-witted thug! Trivia note: supporting actor Michael Mark appears in small but significant roles in all three Falcon films... in this one, he's the man working at the Salvation Army. Calvert's smooth, laid-back, but witty approach to the Falcon role is a refreshing change-of-pace, and it's a shame they only made three of these films. This is by far the quirkiest of the three, the latter two being more straight-forward detective films minus dog routines and magic tricks. All three Calvert Falcon films are recommended to fans of low-budget 40s murder mysteries/detective films.

First of three post war Falcon films is very different than the Tom Conway/George Saunders series. Certainly the character is unrelated being named Michael Waring as opposed to Gay or Tom Lawrence. This is an extremely poverty stricken film that looks more like the shot on film TV series from a few years later. Still it manages to score points for being its own little engine of entertainment.

The plot has Waring, played by John Calvert as a wise talking, magic doing, detective given 500 dollars by a client to hold on to a key for him. He is to give the key to his attorney when he asks for it. The client it seems has just committed a well publicized murder which he thinks he won't be tried for. Not long after the client is taken into custody Waring begins to be tailed, some one wants the key. Someone also wants his client dead and he somehow murdered in his jail cell.

While not the Falcon most of us know, this is a good little mystery. The plot takes a few unexpected turns which coupled with Waring's magic and attitude makes this one to watch despite its cheapness. This is one to find and watch with a big bag of popcorn.