blanche-2 George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, John Hale, Jerome Cowan and Barry Fitzgerald star in "The Saint Strikes Back," which serves as the debut of George Sanders as Simon Templar. He follows Louis Hayward who starred as The Saint in "The Saint in New York." Simon travels from coast to coast more than once in this story, which concerns a San Franciso crime ring. A police inspector, accused of being part of the crime ring and subsequently discharged, committed suicide. As a result, his daughter, Val (Barrie) has formed a crime organization of her own, hoping to draw out the head of the ring, a man named Waldeman, who is responsible for framing her father.Templar and Inspector Fernak (Hale) work together to find Waldeman -- of course, Fernack thinks Waldeman might actually be Templar.Directed by John Farrow, the script is a little confusing. Not only that, I lost interest in it after the first half hour and had to go back and try to watch it something like three times. I'm not sure why - it could have just been ADHD.Anyway, Sanders made a good Saint - charming, flirtatious, amusing, not completely on the up and up. But I have to admit, much as I loved him, there was something about Louis Hayward as The Saint that was very smooth and charismatic. He made a big impression on me when I saw The Saint in New York a long time ago.Wendy Barrie plays the late police inspector's tough daughter, and she's pretty hard-nosed. Hale and Sanders play well off of one another.I like some other Saint films better, but this one is okay.

gerdeen-1 In this, the second "Saint" film, George Sanders takes over the role of Simon Templar and makes it his own (though Louis Hayward was excellent in the debut of the series). But even Sanders' talents can't make this a good movie. It's too confusing. At just 64 minutes, "The Saint Strikes Back" is packed with unexplained plot twists, huge helpings of comic filler and enough suspicious characters to form two football squads.In many an early detective novel, the writer included a list of characters, major and minor, so the reader could refer back to it when things got murky. Something like that would have helped a lot here. Maybe the characters could have worn name tags, or the actors could have used their real names.To make things worse, the ending is off-hand and anticlimactic, an utter dud. As a mystery fan, I felt cheated, and I rarely feel that way even when I've guessed the solution. Simon Templar might as well have said, "Enough of this case! Let's move on to another." Fortunately, Sanders' later "Saint" films were much better than this.

MartinHafer I love B-detective series films like Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes and The Falcon. Sure, they are mighty predictable, but there is also a certain charm and sense of fun about them that is hard to beat. While the Saint series is not my favorite, I have always enjoyed them because I love seeing George Sanders so gracefully navigate himself through the mystery--he was the epitome of cool and sophisticated. Because of this, I often find myself watching the film for his performance but caring little for the actual mystery (so many of them seem similar). However, in this dull effort, I just couldn't get past the lifeless plot and lack of decent supporting characters. Compared to most of the other films in this series, this might just be the worst, though I did appreciate how the film made reference to the prior film (starring Louis Hayward)--giving the film a sense of continuity and context. Now this isn't to say it's bad--but unfortunately, it is only a time-passer and not a whole lot more.

scorpio-x George Sanders makes his first appearance as the Saint in this film and all I can think is: "Hey, It's Addison DeWitt, private eye!" Because this Saint is nothing but snide, more prone to shoot off a cutting remark than a gun. Did Sanders ever make a movie where you didn't get the feeling he was slumming? Where you didn't get the feeling it pained him to be surrounded by such fools? (Making one wonder, then, why the hell he married Zsa Zsa Gabor.) Playing opposite as the romantic interest is Wendy Barrie, who comes off as more hard-boiled than a two-hour egg. Then, of course, Barrie was a pretty tough broad, having been Bugsy Siegel's girl before Virginia "I'll put my mouth where the money is!" Hill came along. This was also the first of Barrie's three appearances in the Saint series, although she played a different character each time.But what of the film itself? Well, there's not much to say--the plot is confusing the minor characters difficult to tell apart and the visuals not particularly interesting. The real enjoyment in this picture comes from Sander's deadly wit and Barrie's remarkable aura of toughness.