Truly Dreadful Film

Load of rubbish!!

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

We are looking at big-screen movies, either based on a Raymond Chandler novel or screen-played by Chandler.First off is The Falcon Takes Over (1942), which hardly marks a really auspicious beginning for Chandler or Marlowe on the screen. RKO purchased the screen rights to "Farewell, My Lovely" for a song and had no qualms in making it over for Michael Arlen's character, The Falcon, who figured in a series of sixteen "B" movies, starring George Sanders (the first four), John Calvert (the last three), and Sanders' real-life brother, Tom Conway (the ones in between). By the humble standards of the series "B", however, The Falcon Takes Over could be described as reasonably entertaining. Chandler's tense plot is preserved more or less intact. Only the characters have been changed. Sanders makes The Falcon suitably suave, whilst Lynn Bari provides a spirited heroine.

Falcon Takes Over, The (1942) ** 1/2 (out of 4) An ex-wrestler breaks out of prison, goes looking for his girlfriend and soon bodies start to pile up so The Falcon (George Sanders) gets involved in the case along with a reporter (Lynn Bari). This third film in the series adapted Raymond Chandler's 'Farewell, My Lovely' making it the first to do so and it's also an early example of film noir before the term really caught on. This is certainly the best of the first three films but after a very good start things slide downhill as the film loses target of the central story and doesn't pick up again until the very good ending. Sanders delivers his best performance out of the three films and Allen Jenkins is here in fine form.

Put this one in the same category as "Satan Met a Lady". An amusing way to kill some time for hard-core fans (of Chandler or Hammett), but so far from "essential" that you can't even see the road back to "essential".I guess that we have "The Thin Man" to blame for all this. The success of that movie (and franchise) must have inspired every movie studio out there to create their own version of the suave, wise-cracking society detective. It terms of the source material, it's kind of a "mystery" to me (sorry) why they even felt it necessary to borrow part of the plot from "Farewell, My Lovely". The movie is only 65 minutes long, so you barely get past the first visit to Amthor (the psychic) and things are starting to wrap up. That's only about 1/4 or maybe 1/3 of the way through the original novel -- and most of what *is* taken from the novel had to be twisted around to fit the characters in this movie -- so you get none of the classic Chandler material about Santa Monica (excuse me, "Bay City"), the sanitarium, the gambling boat, etc, etc, etc. Also, the whole setup with Lindsay Marriott coming in to ask the detective to accompany him to his payoff is pretty absurd when the main character is a society bon vivant who solves crimes in his spare time rather than a professional private investigator. It seems to me like it wouldn't have been that much harder to just write a new mystery (or adapt some less incongruous one) but I guess that starting with "Farewell My Lovely" allowed them to finish the script for this movie in, say, twenty minutes instead of an hour.So there's nothing "noir" about this movie at all; it's really only for hard-core fans of Chandler's writing or light 30s/40s mystery/comedies, but it's a fun way to pass some time on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Anyone who has seen the definitive Edward Dmytryk film noir `Murder My Sweet' (1944) will blanch at this low-budget Falcon version of Raymond Chandler's 1940 `Murder My Lovely.' Life is not fair – more viewers will have seen the subsequent performance of Dick Powell as detective Philip Marlowe than George Sanders efforts as Gay Lawrence. These films are simply not comparable although they are based on the same novel. And it isn't that Dmytryk never made Falcon-class films – he directed `The Falcon Strikes Back' in 1943. It is just that `The Falcon Takes Over' comes nowhere near the superior `Murder My Sweet' and thus anyone who has seen both versions will be disappointed. Director Irving Reis was teamed with George Sanders on the first three of the Falcon films – this one being the last appearance for both in the series. George Sanders especially disappointed me – he has done better in this type role and I am pre-disposed to like anything that he has done. Ward Bond does a good job at playing the hulk Moose Malloy – but anyone who has seen Mike Mazurki will not be as impressed. Allen Jenkins does well as faithful sidekick Jonathan 'Goldy' Locke but in the Tom Conway Falcon series, Edward Brophy is a good substitute. James Gleason is always good as the policeman in charge.See this to compare or to round out your viewing of the Sanders Falcon series.