New York is in the grip of a crime spree – apparently the problem isn’t so much catching the crooks as getting them convicted. That darn legal system! So politicians decide to ask for the assistance of a vigilante – a man outside the law, feared by crooks, loved by the innocent. It’s not the Dark Knight, or Charles Bronson – it’s the gentleman adventurer Simon Templar, the Saint.
He’s played by Louis Hayward, a slightly cherubic faced actor who although South African performs with an American accent. They ask the Saint to kill six gangsters, promising to keep it all secret and the support of the police. The Saint agrees – secret police of dictatorships would have loved him. He shoots one while dressed as a nun and gradually starts working his way through the criminal world.
This is not really comfortable stuff, especially with Hayward being so smug and cocky, so it’s not particularly exciting. But about half way through it starts to improve, when Hayward recsues a child from a kidnapping and strikes up a relationship with a beautiful enigmatic girl. It gets a bit darker and more film noir-esque and there’s a scene where the Saint is actually going to be killed by two hoodlums and is saved by the girl… who is on his list.
It’s quite brooding stuff and you can’t help wishing a darker, more complex actor that Hayward was playing the Saint. (Turner Classic Movies called Hayward a poor man’s Orson Welles – and you know Welles would have been perfect). The idea that the Saint is used by the head baddy to knock of the latter’s rivals is a terrific one (and a great way to take the sting out of the vigilante stuff), but the potential of this is not really exploited.
Interesting names often pop up in B movie series and this one has a young Jack Carson (as one of the two hoodlums mentioned above), plus Sig Rumann (who surely appeared in every B picture series of the time).
No comments:
Post a Comment