The Saint Takes Over *** (1940, George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale, Paul Guilfoyle, Morgan Conway) – Classic Movie Review 3224

Director Jack Hively’s twisty and noirish 1940 crime mystery thriller The Saint Takes Over is the fifth in the RKO Saint series, the fourth for George Sanders as Simon Templar, aka The Saint, and the first with an original story by Lynn Root and Frank Fenton without either using a Leslie Charteris novel as a source or having any input from him in the story. So now it’s just ‘featuring The Saint created by Leslie Charteris‘.

But the formula is just as effective as before, with Saint Sanders again helping out hapless NYPD Inspector Henry Fernack (Jonathan Hale), who this time has been framed by Big Ben Egan (Pierre Watkin) and his racetrack fixing gang of five mobsters and has been suspended from the force after $50,000 is found in his safe. Wendy Barrie plays The Saint’s latest romantic interest, Ruth Summers, a fellow passenger he rescues from card cheats aboard an ocean liner, in her second of three appearances in the Saint film series, taking a different role each time. The Saint tries to prove Fernack has been framed before the conspirators are murdered one by one by a mysterious killer, with Fernack the obvious suspect.

Returning from the previous episode, The Saint’s Double Trouble (also 1940), Hively’s direction is again lively, atmospheric and fast moving, keeping the tone quite dark, and it is all polished off so smoothly with another flawless performance by the peerless Sanders. Hale and Barrie are also excellent value. The mystery plot itself by Lynn Root and Frank Fenton is complex, enjoyable and satisfying. The comedy element is gratifyingly low key, mostly in the capable hands of Paul Guilfoyle as weaselly ‘Pearly’ Gates, who turns onto The Saint’s side and becomes his sidekick.

Also in the cast are Paul Guilfoyle, Morgan Conway, Robert Emmett Keane, Cyrus W Kendall, Theodore Von Eltz, Nella Walker, Roland Crew, Robert Middlemass and James Burke.

It is followed by The Saint in Palm Springs (1941). The previous episode, The Saint’s Double Trouble (1940) was the first film to not be directly based on one of the original Saint books, though Charteris did contribute to developing the story.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3224

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