The Saint Strikes Back (1939)

Too much of everything

The Worst Film Ever

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The first film was a full feature. This one is more the length of a B Double Feature under card. This one introduces George Sanders to the title role. It is interesting the control that even RKO had over casting.The creator of The Saint character did not like George Sanders playing the role of the character he created. Still, from this film forward, he would become the Saint for film goers everywhere.This edition has more action than the first film. It goes at a much quicker pace and plays like an early film noir detective film. It sold a lot of tickets and it even does a great job giving the series new star a lock on his role.Overall a smashing success for Saint fans everywhere. The plot twists are here for all to see, and the killers are caught with style. More films to come.

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.

You have to stay wide awake to follow the plot convolutions of THE SAINT STRIKES BACK and by the time it reaches its final scene you may lose your way keeping track of a number of undeveloped characters whose names are bandied about with such nonchalance that in the end it hardly matters when you discover who the main culprit is.The plot revolves around hard-boiled dame WENDY BARRIE who's surrounded herself with gangsters in order to avenge the death of her father. Barrie gives the kind of performance that should have made her a femme fatale in a number of B-films, but nothing more than that. She's a one note actress if ever there was one.Fortunately, the script is graced by the presence of GEORGE SANDERS, who can deliver a crisp line with so much bite and sarcasm that it's fun to see him using his verbal wit on some unsavory characters. NEIL HAMILTON makes no impression whatsoever in a colorless role as a man supposedly in love with Barrie, but BARRY FITZGERALD turns up to put some spice into the story, at least in the last half of the film.It's strictly formula stuff intended to entertain as a programmer in the late '30s and offers nothing very original or new to make it anything more than something of passing interest.

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.