THE FALCON STRIKES BACK

US, 1943, 66 minutes, Black and white.
Tom Conway, Rita Corday, Edgar Kennedy, Jane Randolph, Cliff Clarke, Harriet Hillyard.
Directed by Edward Dmytryk.

The Falcon Strikes Back is the first stand-alone Falcon film with Tom Conway as the Falcon, having taken over from his brother, George Sanders. There are striking similarities between the two brothers in appearance and in manner.

This film is topical for World War II with an issue of the stealing of government bonds. The film opens with the Falcon being accosted in his room by a strange woman and discovered by a journalist with whom he has sparring relationship. He accompanies the woman to a nightclub only to be knocked out, stranded in his car and arrested for murder.

He then returns to the address of the club only to find it an office for the war effort, for women knitting clothes for the troops. The woman in charge seems a very upright character.

The mysterious woman is murdered, once again the Falcon under suspicion by the police. A number of war bonds are stolen and the Falcon goes to the hotel, outside the city limits, where the woman in charge of the war effort has an address.

He encounters a suspicious refugee from Europe confined to a wheelchair, but he is an honest man, about to be duped into spending his money to buy these stolen bonds. More suspicious is the man who is his assistant. He turns out to be a criminal, married to the woman who runs the hotel, who also comes under suspicion. She, however, is being blackmailed by her husband, afraid of losing her job.

There is also a mysterious man, a puppeteer, forever criticising the extravagance and waste of the contemporary generation, saving pins and other nitpicking details. As it turns out, he was tricked by the woman who is running an extortion racket with the bonds, and he has been picking of those in her group who had duped him.

The Falcon moves through all of this very suavely, although as in other films he has a tendency to be knocked out. He also is able to pull swifties on the police. Cliff Clark is Goldie but there is no comparison in effectiveness between Alan Jenkins and Edward Brophy who both took on the role.

The film is interesting for its director, Edward Dmytryk, soon to make Murder, My Suite with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe, then fall foul of the House of Un-American? Activities Committee. He was one of the Hollywood 10. He would resume his career and make films like The Caine Mutiny and The Young Lions before making blockbusters in the 60s and directing into the 1970s. There were more Falcon films in the next three years, and starring Tom Conway.