dougdoepke Good lively installment in the Falcon series. Gay Lawrence (Falcon) gets mixed up with gangsters trying to take over a synthetic diamond invention. This, of course, leads to a lot of mock run-ins with the law and the crooks. Despite the programmer status, the cast is really motivated, showing more than an ordinary amount of spirit. Sanders especially is looser than I've ever seen him, even making little-kid faces at the cops. He seems to be having a good time throughout. There's also a number of good touches from director Reis— the humorously coordinated crowd scenes, the snappy dialog delivery, Goldie (Jenkins) tap-dancing his way up the sobriety line. And catch cat woman Elizabeth Russell in the very last scene, several years before scaring the pants off us in the great Val Lewton horror series. And on a more somber note, gangster Max is played by Victor Killian, himself a 1979 victim of an unsolved murder. All in all, it's a rousing little hour with the Falcon and company, sure to keep you entertained.

lindalinn28 I love these old Falcon movies--especially for the cad actions of George Sanders who made a career out of playing such characters. He was very comical or serious as needed which was a mainstay of movies of this kind in the 30s and 40s. These movies are definitely B-movies but do have an addictive nature to them. Perhaps we are not meant to watch them one after the other as I have recently done. Watching them in this way makes the continuity of characters and actions more noticeable.My main complaint in this one is the total change in character the writers and/or director imposed on Wendy Barrie. Did they even watch the first movie in the series. In "The Gay Falcon"--the first Falcon movie--Wendy's Helen was sweet, helpful, and rather innocent. In this movie, she is dressed too sophisticated, acts too harsh, and has lost all of her sweetness that made her so appealing. (She even uses a different pitch of her voice.) This problem could have been avoided by just making her a different character rather than Helen Reed. After all, the Falcon had a variety of women after him throughout the series. Wendy was in lots of these Falcon and Saint movies and usually played a different character, and there was no quibble in that as we viewers--and probably the 30s and 40s audience did too--realize that these movies were full of character actors--not big stars--and consequently these actors could be plugged into a part as needed. They were probably standing around on the lot waiting to get a script. Just look at Hans Conreid in the 2 Falcon movies--completely different characters but a scene stealer in each.Although many of complaints made by other posters are valid, this movie is a must see for those of us who love B&W B-movies from the past. ! The new Warner Brothers boxed set is very good--even though it lacks any frills, just the movies. A good way to spend about an hour.

MartinHafer In the 1930s and 40s there were a ton of B-detective series films, such as Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, Boston Blackie, The Lone Wolf as well as The Falcon. All these movies shared some common traits--the movies were short (only about an hour in length), were very quickly made, had rather formulaic plots, featured stupid cops and were a lot of fun to watch but also tend to blend together in your mind because the stories are all so similar. I like these films a lot and have probably seen more of them than a person should! Of these series, The Falcon may be my favorite due to the excellent dialog and better than average supporting characters. It's really a shame George Sanders only made a few, though his brother (Tom Conway) continued the series with about nine of his own. It's also a shame that as the series continued, the films became less and less interesting--perhaps due to the frequency of their being produced (six in a two year span alone).As I mentioned above, The Falcon series had good supporting characters. In this case, the Inspector was played very capably by veteran character actor James Gleason. Unlike most cops in other series, Gleason wasn't particularly dim. He did have a dim assistant (Leo Cleary), but despite Brody's lower than normal I.Q., he did manage to catch the criminals single-handedly. All this was such a relief to me--finally cops in a detective film that weren't total buffoons! In addition to these actors, George Sanders' assistant is the old reliable character actor, Allen Jenkins--who is always great for a laugh.The plot is about a synthetic diamond formula that is so good that even experts can't tell these fakes from high quality originals. Not surprisingly, the inventor and his formula are kidnapped (after Gleason does about the only bone-headed thing in the movie--leaving the scientist alone in his lab to wait for a bodyguard to arrive). Now that I think about it, the plot itself really isn't all that important--it's the characters and Sanders' witty comments he made throughout this breezy little gem.

bob the moo Samson is a hard working scientist who has developed a technique for developing synthetic diamond for the purposes of tooling and industrial use.However the synthetic diamonds are so realistic that even experts cannot tell them apart – making Samson a target for criminals. When Samson goes missing, Inspector O'Hara turns to Gay Lawrence for help. Despite having woman troubles with his fiancé, Helen, the Falcon finds himself in the middle of the investigation and pursued by the gang, who are understandably keen to get such a keen mind off the case before he makes progress.With a pretty standard (and unlikely) set up, it is not long before the Falcon is drafted onto the case. The plot is not great though and isn't as focused on the actual investigation as I would have liked. Instead it mixes it with the side kick of Falcon's fiancé and, while I can see what they were trying to do with it, it doesn't really work awfully well at all. Indeed it would have made a nice play with Helen being the sidekick that the Falcon has in other films but here this aspect and the actual plot mix about as well as oil and water and, sadly, the investigation into Samson's disappearance occasionally plays second fiddle to Lawrence having woman troubles.However most viewers of this series will have gotten used to the fact that the crime plots are never the strongest here but often this is covered by some good humour. While there are quite a few nice touches to this material, the film is not nearly as amusing as it should be. The Falcon himself has a certain swagger to him but too much of the film is him looking flustered and frustrated by trying to balance his couple of women. The script does throw out some good material for minor roles and has some funny set ups (playing drunk to escape the baddies is a good moment) but generally it isn't funny enough to cover the fact that the plot can't even manage to stretch to an hour. As a result the cast don't do as well as they could have. Sanders is very good in some scenes but then in others he is very poor and not anything like the cool, crisp mind that I expect him to be. Jenkins is poorly used considering how funny he can be when used sparingly in support – but here he is far too sparingly used and has nothing to do until late in the day. Gleason's inspector is good but Barrie is annoying and Maris is nowhere near the femme fatale she was clearly trying to be.It is still an OK little film but not one of the better in the series even if fans still enjoy it for what it is. The film gets better as it goes but too much in the first half is poorly judged and the actual case/plot mostly plays as second billing behind some flat comedy involving a couple of 'dames' and several misunderstandings.