THE SAINT TAKES OVER

US, 1940, 69 minutes, Black and white.
George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale.
Directed by Jack Hively.

The Saint Takes Over is the fifth film in the Saint series. A very suave 30ish George Sanders had settled himself into the role – although, in this film, it is something of a surprise to see him involved in fisticuffs.

The series started at the end of the 1930s and continued into the 1940s. The stories are based on novels and short stories by Leslie Charteris.

The plot is fairly conventional, Simon Templar, the Saint, returning to the United States to defend a friend who is accused of a crime of which he is innocent. On the boat, he meets a young woman and is attracted to her.

The plot involves gangsters who are responsible for the death of a young man. The treatment of the gangsters is as might be expected. However, the young woman turns up again in suspicious circumstances. It emerges that she is the sister of the murdered man and is out to get vengeance. This means that she becomes entangled with the Saint, and while achieving her vengeance, suffers the consequences.

The Saint series entertains in a basic kind of way, but is best seen as an example of this kind of second feature from the 1940s.