DEVIL'S CARGO

US, 1948, 64 minutes, Black-and-white.
John Calvert, Rochelle Hudson, Roscoe Karns, Lyle Talbot, Theodore Von Eltz, Paul Marion.
Directed by John F. Link.

The main reason for considering Devil’s Cargo is that it is a Falcon film. RKO had made a very entertaining series from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s with the Falcon played by George Sanders and then his brother, Tom Conway. The series was resurrected, although the Falcon was given a different name, and three films made with John Calvert.

John Calvert had trained as a magician and there are some sequences in this film where he gets the opportunity to exercise Magic. Calvert also lived well into the beginning of the 21st-century and was still presenting magic on stage.

This film has a Los Angeles setting, an initial murder scene in silhouette, a man coming to the Falcon to confess that he had committed the crime but was wanting protection. The audience had seen him also putting something into a luggage storage box and visiting a bank.

The motivation was that the rich playboy who was killed was in a relationship with the murderer’s wife. She is interviewed but makes no concessions. His lawyer also enters into the action, a small businessman with a knowledge of the law. Then the murderer is found dead by poison in his prison cell. Some minor criminals open the storage box – and it explodes.

The Falcon has a pleasant manner, does not have the comic sidekick as in the other films but is accompanied by his dog. Gathering information, it is clear that the lawyer is behind the deaths, that the man who claimed to be the murderer had a signed confession.

Confrontation and a shootout. There were two more films in the series.