George Sanders

The Falcon Takes Over

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George Sanders and Lynn Bari in an open top car

The Falcon Takes Over could be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. First appearance of a Raymond Chandler story on screen? – this is it, a version of his Farewell, My Lovely, which would get a bigger-budget workthrough two years later as Murder, My Sweet, with Dick Powell in the lead. Here, it’s 1942, we’re in B movie territory and it’s George Sanders as the detective on the case of a missing person. Big bruiser Moose Malloy (Ward Bond) would very much like to know where his showgirl girlfriend has disappeared to, and so presses Gay Lawrence aka The Falcon (Sanders) to find her. Chandler’s loads up the plot – a jade necklace, … Read more

Man Hunt

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Captain Thorndike takes aim with is rifle

A film expressly designed to lure the US into the war in Europe, 1941’s Man Hunt is also Fritz Lang’s attempt at a rollicking The 39 Steps-style yarn, with dashing about, derring-do, stiff upper lips, local colour and a man/woman yoking-together that’s got everything Hitchcock had except handcuffs and his exquisite sense of pace. It bogs down, in other words. But only towards the end. Up till then this is a fast-moving story about a tweedy secret agent of some sort, who is caught red-handed while lining up his rifle’s telescopic sight on Adolf Hitler. When interrogated by the Nazis Captain Alan Thorndike’s defence is that he had no intention of actually killing … Read more

Lured

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George Sanders and Lucille Ball

The 1947 noirish thriller Lured stars Lucille Ball and is directed by Douglas Sirk, neither of them names you’d associate with this sort of thing. Ball was a comic actor, Sirk is now chiefly remembered for big, overheated and florid dramas like All That Heaven Allows, but both show their breadth of talent in this relatively low-budget production shiny with quality. It looks at first like a serial killer thriller, and a particularly modern one – seven women dead, each of whose murders has been accompanied by a poem sent to the police, a Seven-style taunt. The police, meanwhile, though led by crusty oldster Inspector Harley Temple (Charles Coburn) are bringing all the … Read more