Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

utgard14 The second movie in RKO's The Saint series is the first to star the inimitable George Sanders. Here we have Simon Templar, aka the Saint, helping a woman who turned to crime after her policeman father was disgraced and committed suicide. While Louis Hayward was a tough and gritty Saint in the first film, George Sanders is all style and class. He's charming, witty, urbane, and impossible to dislike. Jonathan Hale plays Templar's police inspector friend who finds himself torn between trusting Simon and doing his duty. He also provides much of the film's humor. Wendy Barrie plays the embittered woman Templar helps. The rest of the cast includes Neil Hamilton, Jerome Cowan, Edward Gargan, and the great Barry Fitzgerald. John 'father of Mia' Farrow's direction is very good, especially his use of attractive close-ups. Nice score from Roy Webb. It's a great B movie with good characters and a brisk pace. Sanders is undeniably fun to watch in one of his best roles. If you like old detective movies I can't imagine you not liking this one.

Leofwine_draca THE SAINT STRIKES BACK, an early adaptation of a Leslie Charteris novel starring George Sanders, is a real chore to sit through. The problem with it is the script, which opts for talky and dull mystery shenanigans when instead it could have included some serial-style thrills and pulp adventures. Most of the film is set in a few rooms with a number of criminal characters double-crossing each other which is neither here nor there. As for the "striking" done by the Saint, we see him gun down a would-be assassin in an early scene and trap another with a thrown knife at the climax, but that's the extent of his heroism. Much of the film just sees him playing different criminal elements off each other.This RKO picture is stagy and static, and the print I saw had muffled sound. The film has about as much artistic inspiration as a typical Monogram programmer. Sanders is stiff as the titular secret agent, with only an occasional twinkle in his eye reminding us that he was once a popular actor. The rest of the performances aren't worth boring with. The most interesting part of the film is the comedy; the highlight a surreal dream sequence in which a man is haunted by lobsters. If only the rest of the film's imagination had been on par with this.

Albert Ohayon This is not George Sanders' best "Saint" movie by any stretch("The Saint in London" gets that honor). Instead we get an average low-budget mystery movie that has very few surprises. George Sanders is introduced to us as Simon Templar in this movie. Sanders plays him as a suave, urbane and sophisticated hero, rarely caught off guard("not the man who knows everything, just the man who knows the important things"). Unfortunately the script in this production lets him down. Not only is it less than engaging, it also tends to be needlessly confusing. Wendy Barrie plays the female lead(as she did in two other Sanders-Saint films)but she is much too stiff. I don't have a problem with her playing the character as a tough-as-nails femme-fatale but I think Barrie overdoes it and the result is that her character loses credibility. Neil Hamilton (commissioner Gordon on TV's Batman) plays one of Barrie's associates in crime like some kind of effeminate twit. This undermines what should be a strong bond between him and Barrie. The "surprise" ending is weak and anyone who has not guessed it well in advance has obviously not been paying attention throughout.There is one great sequence that almost makes the film worth seeing. It occurs when Inspector Fernack(Jonathan Hale) has a bout of indigestion and hallucinates about Lobsters riding trucks(!!). Salvator Dali eat your heart out.Above mentioned sequence and Sanders are the only reasons to bother with this one (unless you want to see Wendy Barrie chewing on the scenery). I give it 6 lobsters out of 10.

scorpio-x George Sanders makes his first appearance as the Saint in this film and all I can think is: "Hey, It's Addison DeWitt, private eye!" Because this Saint is nothing but snide, more prone to shoot off a cutting remark than a gun. Did Sanders ever make a movie where you didn't get the feeling he was slumming? Where you didn't get the feeling it pained him to be surrounded by such fools? (Making one wonder, then, why the hell he married Zsa Zsa Gabor.) Playing opposite as the romantic interest is Wendy Barrie, who comes off as more hard-boiled than a two-hour egg. Then, of course, Barrie was a pretty tough broad, having been Bugsy Siegel's girl before Virginia "I'll put my mouth where the money is!" Hill came along. This was also the first of Barrie's three appearances in the Saint series, although she played a different character each time.But what of the film itself? Well, there's not much to say--the plot is confusing the minor characters difficult to tell apart and the visuals not particularly interesting. The real enjoyment in this picture comes from Sander's deadly wit and Barrie's remarkable aura of toughness.