It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The acting in this movie is really good.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The back story of the substitute treasure being pursued here by all in lieu of the more famous black falcon is the historical horn of a knight named Roland. When this warrior attempted to use the fabled horn to summon reinforcements for his outnumbered band, the enemy killed him and FILLED THE HORN WITH JEWELS SO IT COULD NOT BE BLOWN AGAIN! You cannot help asking yourself, why didn't these guys just stomp the horn to pieces? Did they lug around so many jewels that they had run out of Zip-Locks in which to store them? Furthermore, since you cannot enamel such an unwieldy cornucopia, the suspense is taken out of the plot in that the horn cannot be dramatically scratched and proved to be a fake at the end, but rather turns out to be pretty ordinary and unlikely to have tricked anyone older than three. The pathos of the P.I. sending a woman he's half in love with to the gallows in the 1931 and 1941 versions turns into bathos here, as his partner's femme fatale lady of doom simply schemes at a way of cheating the P.I. of the reward money implausibly posted for the capture of the dead partner's killer. Sheesh!

Satan Met a Lady is a fascinating adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon into an unusual mixture of mystery and comedy and actually has several funny moments but veers so far from the source material that its effect is dissipated. In comparison to some recent comedy thrillers the film could be seen as ahead of its time. If John Huston had never made the quintessential Film Noir adaption of Hammet's novel The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart in the lead, Satan Met a Lady may have gained an entirely different stature.The film does have some funny moments as when Valerie Purvis catches Shayne searching her room and pulls a gun on him with the line "Do you mind very much, Mr. Shayne, taking off your hat in the presence of a lady with a gun?" There is also some very funny stuff with Warren William playing against Arthur Treacher's British character Anthony Travers. When Travers says he'll give Shayne 500 dollars for information and hands him a bill, the detective walks over to a lamp inspects the bill and summarily tears it up, getting a gentlemanly response from the Brit in an "Sorry" as he hands him another bill which the private dick inspects and pockets- it's a bit of visual business that is perfectly timed by the actors.

This was the film that Bette Davis finally walked out of Warner Brothers because she'd had enough. Satan Met A Lady is a comic version of the Dashiell Hammett novel, The Maltese Falcon it in fact is the second of three versions of the story that was filmed, all by Warner Brothers. It was that third one with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor that is the beloved classic come down to us.I wouldn't be surprised, but that Bette might have thought that this was a straight version of the story, that she'd be doing the part that Mary Astor made famous. Instead the version she got was something that might have worked with Joan Blondell doing the part, but Bette was clearly unhappy and just going through the motions.As for Warren William, his Ted Shayne is far different from the laconic and cynical Humphrey Bogart. He's one unapologetic rogue just breezing through the film as he did with so many others on charm and a Barrymore light profile.Instead of the loyal and efficient Effie that we all remember Lee Patrick for, we get the scatterbrained and clueless Marie Wilson doing her usual shtick. The parts that Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet made classic were done by Arthur Treacher and Allison Skipworth. I thought Arthur was going to offer some fish and chips to William at many points during the film.The famous Hitchcockian McGuffin is not a black bird allegedly crusted over to hide a jeweled coat, but an old ram's horn, purportedly the trumpet that French legendary hero Roland sounded as he covered Emperor Charlemagne's retreat. It too was stuffed with jewels according to legend.At the end of the film Warren William actually got a few notes out of the French horn. It blew well and some might say the film did also.

First off: this is not the stuff of classics. We're not talking CASABLANCA or CITIZEN KANE (and especially not the 1941 MALTESE FALCON) here. And, yes, perhaps it IS the least successful version of Hammett's story (although the 1931 film really drags these days…). But an off-the-wall take on a classic story can still be funny and stand on its own without being compared to more traditional versions. That's the way you should approach Satan MET A LADY and that is why I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this film.What I like most is that no one is taking anything too seriously. In THE MALTESE FALCON, Gutman and Wonderly/O'Shaughnessy say they never know what's going to come out of Spade's mouth next. That's certainly true here: from gender bending (the Gutman character is a woman) to different takes on characters (the "gunsel" is a wimpy mama's boy) to off-the-wall dialogue, you never know what's going to happen next. Without over-the-top "winking" at the audience, the actors tell us not to take things too seriously either and just have fun. If you know either of the other versions, it's fun wondering what they're going to pull out of the hat next. (For example, it's not a statue of a falcon that everyone is after, but rather the so-called (and equally fictitious) "Horn of Roland" stuffed with jewels and supposedly handed down from the days of Charlemagne.) To be sure, not everything works. When you try to play off-the-wall, you're bound to make some mistakes, and even fall flat. The secretary for Shayne (Spade), now re-named Miss Murgatroyd (instead of Effie), is far too ditsy, even for this material; her romance scenes make Shayne/Spade play more like he's toying with jail bait. But even so, the worst you can say about the movie as a whole is that it's "uneven".Sure, the 1941 version is far better, both as a film and as a rendering of Hammett's story. However, the filmmakers weren't trying to be faithful to the source material here. Brown Holmes wrote the screenplay for the 1931 version and yet they hired him again for this one and didn't care that he ran roughshod over the original story.I'm no apologist: this is not a great film. But it does have its own charms and it's certainly better than much of the drivel that came out of the 1930s. Give it a try: the unpredictability factor alone makes it worth the ride.