The Saint Strikes Back (1939)
Directed by John Farrow

Film Review

After the success of The Saint in New York (1938), RKO Pictures realised they were on to a winner and rushed out a second Saint adventure, The Saint Strikes Back (1939), but with one significant change.  Louis Hayward, the star of the first film, was replaced with George Sanders, in what was to be the latter actor's first big break since he began working in Hollywood in the mid-1930s.  With his upper crust English accent, ambiguous persona and cool, debonair charm, Sanders was perfect for the role of Leslie Charteris's contradictory anti-hero Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint.  This is presumably where Sanders acquired his reputation for playing likeable cads and the phenomenal success of this film and its four successors established the actor as a major Hollywood star.  The film's success (it took almost half a million dollars at the box office, roughly four times what it cost to make) helped to elevate Sanders from B-movie obscurity to stardom.

The Saint Strikes Back was adapted from Charteris's novel Angels of Doom, the most notable alteration being the change of location, from England to San Francisco.  Whilst it is not the best in the series, the film is well-scripted and makes an effective mystery-thriller, its main appeal being the strong central performances from Sanders and his glamorous co-star Wendy Barrie.  Another rising star, Barrie had previously played Jane Seymour in Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and would later feature in two subsequent Saint films, before gaining her own television series (The Wendy Barrie Show) in the late 1940s.  The two lead actors spark off each other almost as well as Bogart and Bacall, detracting from the overly convoluted plot and other creditable performances supplied by Jonathan Hale, Jerome Cowan and Barry Fitzgerald.  Sanders brings far more charm and mystique to his portrayal of the Saint than his successors, and the final expressionistic shot of him standing silhouetted beside a lamp post has an iconic feel to it, leaving us with the reassuring thought that in the crime-ridden metropolis there is always some saintly good guy watching over us.

Film Synopsis

At a New Year's party in San Francisco, Val Travers's plan to assassinate someone is thwarted by Simon Templar, better known as The Saint.  To prevent the killing, Templar has no choice but to shoot the assassin, but this once again brings him on the wrong side of the law.  As the San Francisco police attempts to bring him to book, Templar confronts Val Travers, the leader of a gang of small-time hoodlums.  It appears that Travers is out to avenge the death of her father, a former police inspector who was discredited whilst investigating the criminal mastermind Waldeman.  As his police pursuers begin to suspect he might be Waldeman, Templar begins his own investigation, which leads to the seemingly unimpeachable philanthropist Martin Eastman.  From some stolen money found in Eastman's safe it becomes apparent that Eastman was in some way connected with Waldeman...