The third George Sanders Saint film would seem to offers two great delights – Sanders in a double role and Bela Lugosi in the support cast. But Lugosi’s role is tiny (he plays a gangster mate of the baddy Sanders), and the fun is mild. There’s not that much difference in personality between the two characters played by Sanders, and so where’s the fun in that? Also the plot isn’t very interesting, despite the addition of a mummy from Egypt, a decent sequence where the Saint escapes from a motor boat, and a fun bit where Sanders dresses up as a widow – if I get this right the good Sanders is going around killing people who deserve it, then the bad Sanders kills a nice guy who doesn’t deserve it and the Saint gets blamed.
There are too many scenes of Sanders breaking into a room, it gets monotonous after a while. And it was awfully risky of the Saint to allow himself to be knocked out by the baddy at the end – what if the baddy killed him? (NB The baddie dies with six minutes still to go – this drags). The female lead isn’t bad; she and Sanders have a pleasing wistful romantic relationship (she’s an old flame).
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