Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

utgard14 The Falcon returns...sort of. Not really. Two years after the RKO Falcon series ended, Poverty Row studio Film Classics began their own series. There's not much this has in common with the George Sanders/Tom Conway films. The Falcon, now played by John Calvert, has a new name: Michael Watling. Gone is the comic relief sidekick. Here the Falcon has a dog he talks to. Also gone are charm, wit, adventure, and everything else that worked in the previous series. This is just a generic detective tale, made on cheap sets with a forgettable lead backed up by a cast of actors who had seen better days. The RKO series was great. Even if the plots weren't always riveting, you could always rely on Sanders and Conway to deliver and the production values were usually very nice. This is just a big nothing burger. Sadly there are two more 'fake Falcon' films after this.

JohnHowardReid The 16 picture "Falcon" series which commenced so promisingly with RKO's The Gay Falcon in 1941, starring George Sanders in the title role, is now on its last gasp. Admittedly, it's not a total waste of time. Aside from its curiosity value, this fourteenth entry does boast an interesting support cast including comedians Roscoe Karns and Tom Kennedy in straight roles as a police lieutenant and a gangster, respectively. In the title role, John Calvert, a professional magician in real life, does attempt a few tricks, but in at least one of them he is obviously helped out by some clumsy special effects work. Although second-billed, the lovely Rochelle Hudson, not seen in movies since 1942, has not much of a role here. Blink, two or three times, and you'll miss her. The movie was directed with a bit more punch than his usual half-steam by slow-paced John F. Link, Sr., a Monogram editor who handled the elongated editing for the poor Charlie Chan entry, Meeting at Midnight. (By "elongated editing", I mean editing that purposely allows scenes to run far too long and well past their interest value, in order to spin out an otherwise too-short film to support feature length of around 60 minutes). This was Link's first film as a director. He followed up with Call of the Forest in 1949, then returned very briefly to the editor's bench in 1952. Devil's Cargo (the screenplay has absolutely nothing to do with either devils or cargoes) is available on a very good Alpha DVD. Rated "5" for its curiosity value!

dbborroughs First of three post war Falcon films is very different than the Tom Conway/George Saunders series. Certainly the character is unrelated being named Michael Waring as opposed to Gay or Tom Lawrence. This is an extremely poverty stricken film that looks more like the shot on film TV series from a few years later. Still it manages to score points for being its own little engine of entertainment.The plot has Waring, played by John Calvert as a wise talking, magic doing, detective given 500 dollars by a client to hold on to a key for him. He is to give the key to his attorney when he asks for it. The client it seems has just committed a well publicized murder which he thinks he won't be tried for. Not long after the client is taken into custody Waring begins to be tailed, some one wants the key. Someone also wants his client dead and he somehow murdered in his jail cell.While not the Falcon most of us know, this is a good little mystery. The plot takes a few unexpected turns which coupled with Waring's magic and attitude makes this one to watch despite its cheapness. This is one to find and watch with a big bag of popcorn.

django-1 This was the first of three films made by the small "Film Classics" company in 1948-49 starring actor-magician John Calvert as The Falcon, and it's very much unlike the latter two films. In this one, Calvert does magic tricks at various times throughout the movie (!!) AND his co-star is a dog named Brain Trust (!!!) who is listed as playing "himself." Calvert actually talks to the dog in some scenes. Perhaps the dog was a nod to the successful Thin Man films, but fortunately the dog routine was dropped in the latter two films, as were the magic tricks (which are a pleasant distraction,actually!). The film starts, and ends, with Calvert sitting in his bathtub! In the first scene, a man named Ramon Delgado comes to see The Falcon and confesses that he killed a man last night because the man was involved with his wife. Delgado feels that the killing was in self-defense and asks the Falcon to help him turn himself in to the police and see that his rights are respected. Of course, as this is a murder mystery, things are obviously not as simple as that, and the plot unfolds in a fascinating way. As in the other films in the series, the resolution is unexpected and quite exciting. This film was directed by John Link, a journeyman who mostly worked as an editor, and it also features some nice location shooting in 1948 L.A. A fine supporting cast of veterans--Roscoe Karns as the police lt., Rochelle Hudson as the seductive Mrs. Delgado, Theodore Van Eltz as a seedy attorney, Lyle Talbot as a mysterious "business man", and comedian Tom Kennedy, who often played a dim-witted copy, as a dim-witted thug! Trivia note: supporting actor Michael Mark appears in small but significant roles in all three Falcon films... in this one, he's the man working at the Salvation Army. Calvert's smooth, laid-back, but witty approach to the Falcon role is a refreshing change-of-pace, and it's a shame they only made three of these films. This is by far the quirkiest of the three, the latter two being more straight-forward detective films minus dog routines and magic tricks. All three Calvert Falcon films are recommended to fans of low-budget 40s murder mysteries/detective films.