The Saint's Return (1953)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Louis Hayward returns to the character he helped launch on the big screen in the first of RKO's The Saint series back in the '30s. He portrayed a gritty and tough Saint in one movie before George Sanders took over and made the role his own, bringing a suaveness and sophistication to the part. It's a nice bookend for the character, I suppose, to have the same actor start and essentially finish the series. Hammer was probably hoping this might revive the series for them. Unfortunately it did not and the reason is this movie is lifeless. Whatever appealed to Hayward about the role of Simon Templar in 1938 that helped his performance there so much seems long gone here. This time around he seems to be just going through the motions and collecting a paycheck. No one else in the cast stands out in any noticeable way and the script is a cure for insomnia, so there really isn't much else to say about this. It's a dull movie that you'll probably forget a minute after the end credits appear.

After being the first actor to play The Saint, Louis Hayward returns to the role of Leslie Charteris's debonair modern Robin Hood for Hammer films in Great Britain. The Sain't Girl Friday has Hayward rushing back to the United Kingdom in response to a socialite friend of his. Before he arrives however the woman is killed in a mighty suspicious car crash.Charles Victor as Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard tells Hayward to stay out of it which is all the incentive Simon Templar needs to get in all the more. His late friend had a nasty gambling habit and she was in debt to a group called The River Gang.This bunch doesn't always take pound sterling for payment. Any number of people can work off their debt in other ways. Finding this out is eventually how Hayward cracks the case.Television fans of The Saint remember a young Roger Moore as Simon Templar and the big screen actor best known for the role is George Sanders. But Hayward does his usual good work and he would have been great himself as a small screen Simon Templar before Moore got the part.The Saint's Girl Friday features British blond bombshell Diana Dors, their answer to Marilyn Monroe. She's as good a reason as any to see this film.A good note to end the big screen series with.

This final picture in the Saint series is connected to the early 1940s RKO entries only by the presence of Louis Hayward, the original Simon Templar in 1938's The Saint in New York.This time around, the Saint seeks information about a girlfriend who cabled him for help—and then crashed her car into the river before his arrival on the scene. The police call it an accident, but….Hayward is a smooth-talking Saint whose smirk is alternately insolent and charming; caught red-handed snooping through an apartment, he merely removes the cigar from his mouth and asks politely, "Pardon me…do you have a match?" He can play rough, however, as well—he does not hesitate to slap around a crook who has sneaked into his own room and doesn't want to tell who sent him.The Saint is assisted by right-hand man Hoppy (Thomas Gallagher), a reformed pickpocket (of course) who doubles as valet and bodyguard. The "girl Friday" of the title is a woman named Carol (Naomi Chance), whose help Templar enlists in tracking the mob that killed his girlfriend and is threatening and manipulating Carol over gambling debts.The plot is okay but nothing extraordinary, although the identity of the secret mob "chief" did surprise me at the end. The mood is rather darker than that of the fairly breezy comedy-mysteries of a decade earlier; however, Louis Hayward's confident performance, a fair amount of droll humor, and some atmospheric London underworld settings combine for an entertaining and still essentially light-hearted adventure.

Louis Hayward is many people's preference as the Saint over George Sanders, precisely because he played him as a hard, cold hit-man in 1938's The Saint in New York. While this is, undeniably, a trait in Charteris's creation, it is not the most likeable one and it is intriguing to see too Hayward's performance has mellowed with age. The script here is a little trite, but on the whole this is a more than passable little preamble that predicts nicely the Saint the Roger Moore series would show, with the Saint a vaguely retired disreputable character who finds it hard to stay on the right side of the law. There is much humour, and a little padding, but the film is worth a watch for Saint fanatics. For Hammer Film fans (the film was shot for RKO by the British studio) a nice touch is the shot of a floor plan of a country house that is about to be burgled; the names of all the guests belong to Hammer regular cast and crew members, including cult director Terence Fisher.