MikeMagi Gotta' hand it to Warner Bros, they kept adapting Dasheill Hammett's twisted tale til they got it right. This version, shot some six years earlier than "The Maltese Falcon" can't decide whether it's a comedy or a mystery...and isn't very good as either. As detective Ted Shane, Warren William is so ludicrously blithe that his performance comes off as burlesque. I've been shot at. Ha ha. My, that was close. Isn't detecting fun? Bette Davis does somewhat better as the mystery woman who hires him to find a Saracen horn full of jewels, alternately vamping and double-crossing the private eye. Add Allison Skipworth and Arthur Treacher (yeah, the fish-and-chips guy) in roles that would eventually be better played by Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre and you have a movie that pleads to be re-made. Which fortunately it was.

Hot 888 Mama The back story of the substitute treasure being pursued here by all in lieu of the more famous black falcon is the historical horn of a knight named Roland. When this warrior attempted to use the fabled horn to summon reinforcements for his outnumbered band, the enemy killed him and FILLED THE HORN WITH JEWELS SO IT COULD NOT BE BLOWN AGAIN! You cannot help asking yourself, why didn't these guys just stomp the horn to pieces? Did they lug around so many jewels that they had run out of Zip-Locks in which to store them? Furthermore, since you cannot enamel such an unwieldy cornucopia, the suspense is taken out of the plot in that the horn cannot be dramatically scratched and proved to be a fake at the end, but rather turns out to be pretty ordinary and unlikely to have tricked anyone older than three. The pathos of the P.I. sending a woman he's half in love with to the gallows in the 1931 and 1941 versions turns into bathos here, as his partner's femme fatale lady of doom simply schemes at a way of cheating the P.I. of the reward money implausibly posted for the capture of the dead partner's killer. Sheesh!

Terrell-4 If you believe that old movies don't make classic movies just because they're old, Satan Met a Lady will make your case. It's based more or less faithfully on The Maltese Falcon, the first movie of which was made in 1931. This version stars Warren William as Ted Shayne (Sam Spade), Bette Davis as Valerie Purvis (Ruth Wunderly), Alison Skipworth as Madame Barabbas (Caspar Gutman) and Arthur Treacher as Anthony Travers (Joel Cairo), with Maynard Holmes as Kenny (Wilmer Cook) and Marie Wilson as Miss Murgatroyd (Effie Perrine). The intent must have been to take the Dashiell Hammett story and turn it into a comedy murder mystery. The music under the opening credits is so jaunty you might expect a musical. Does it work? Sadly, no, not in my opinion. Of the characters, only Arthur Treacher comes off as genuinely interesting. If Treacher is remembered now it's probably only as one of the many stuffy English butlers he played. Here, he's remarkably good, dealing with fast dialogue and, in this movie, what passes for ironic and witty lines. He's a completely different type from Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo, but he's almost as vivid. The highlight of the film, in fact, is when we first meet him ransacking Shayne's apartment, then having some dueling dialogue with Shayne when Shayne unexpectedly appears. This scene is good stuff. For the rest, some of the actors are competent and some are mediocre. Bette Davis, surprisingly, doesn't make much of an impression; she's just too obviously intelligent and self-centered for the role. You watch her, but you're not much taken by her. Warren William probably comes off weakest, and some of this is not his fault. He had a profile as sharp as the prow of a yacht, a smooth, trained baritone, great diction and a sense of humor. Unfortunately, William is saddled with a trench coat that looks half a size to large for him; the collar gaps noticeably every time he leans over, sits down or is roughed up. He wears what appears to be a black Stetson. The combination makes him look almost silly at times. More damaging, we meet his version of Sam Spade being run out of town, then charming a large lady with jewels, then coming on very strong to Marie Wilson's ditzy, dumb blonde of a secretary, Miss Murgatroyd. The effect is less of a private eye who is a charming seducer than of a sleazy, middle-aged goat. He wears quite a bit of pomade on his hair. Satan Met a Lady is a curiosity piece, nothing more.

zetes The second version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon came in the wake of the big success of a cinematic adaptation of another of the author's novels, The Thin Man. So here we get a comic version starring a wise-cracking gentleman, Warren William (who had played Julius Caesar in DeMille's Cleopatra). The comedy is sometimes desperate. It's played WAY over the top. If they had toned in down a tad, and maybe got William Powell instead of Warren William, it would have been a great film. Which would have been terrible because then, if it had been a success, Warner Brothers wouldn't have deigned to remake it five years later. We wouldn't have the 1941 masterpiece, John Huston's career might have went an entirely different way, and film noir wouldn't have developed as we know it. Film history might look damn different just because of this goofy little adaptation! It's generally considered the worst of the three adaptations, but I really liked it. It's a heck of a lot better than the stale '31 version, and it stands as a nice little companion piece to the '41 version. A couple of the actors I really liked, notably Alison Skipworth in the Gutman role (all character names have been changed, by the way, but I'll keep to the originals), Arthur Treacher as Cairo, and Maynard Holmes as Wilmer (shockingly uncredited where several less important characters were!). The best of the best, though: Marie Wilson in the Effie role. Oh. You thought I was going to say Bette Davis. Nah. She's probably the least of the three Brigids. The secretary role is expanded a bit, and she's almost made Spade's love interest. Wilson gives a very cute comic performance. Well worth checking out.