THE LONE WOLF STRIKES

US, 1940, 67 minutes, Black-and-white.
Warren William, Joan Perry, Eric Blore, Alan Baxter, Astrid Alwyn, Montague Love, Robert Wilcox, Don Beddoe, Fred Kelsey.
Directed by Sidney Salkow.


The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, 1939, was very successful, a star vehicle for Warren William. It was the first of nine films in a series featuring him as Michael Lanyard, reformed criminal and safe breaker. This film also introduced Eric Blore as Jamison, his butler and associate in crime and reform. Each film was just over an hour, an enjoyable supporting feature, showing William as his suave best, infiltrating many a crime, always solving the crimes. Another regular was first in hall as Inspector Crane as well is Fred Kelsey as his inept associate, Dickens, always making a fool of himself, eager to arrest Lanyard, his resignation often being demanded.

All the films were a variation on the basic plot, a crime introduced, often with jewellery, an appeal to Lanyard or his accidental involvement, the police accusing him of the crime, his ingenious devices, along with Jamison, to infiltrate criminal groups, expose the truth and humiliate the police.

This film involves jewellery, a widower charmed by the thief, is stealing the family pearls, she and her partner summoning a fence from Amsterdam, Lanyard discovering the truth, employed by the widower’s daughter (and he has been murdered in the contrived traffic accident), who is also the target of the thieves setting up a young man to court the daughter.

There are a whole lots of comings and goings, Lanyard impersonating the fence from Amsterdam at the thieves party, the continual exchange of the pearls for the real pearls, the daughter getting into all kinds of troubles and compromising Lanyard, causing him to offer and rescue her with the help of Jamison.

Quite some complications with the thieves, the setting up of the young man, another boss taking control, the man from Amsterdam hotfooting it out of the United States – and everybody assembling on a ferry with unmasking and arrests.

This was the first of the series directed by Sidney Salkow who often collaborated in writing the screenplay.