The Saint’s Return [The Saint’s Girl Friday] *** (1953, Louis Hayward, Naomi Chance, Sydney Tafler, Charles Victor, Harold Lang, Diana Dors, Jane Carr) – Classic Movie Review 3228

‘When he hits London…blondes…bullets…and blackmail…set him up FOR THE KILL!!’

Director Seymour Friedman’s 1953 crime mystery thriller for Hammer Films (released in the US as The Saint’s Girl Friday) is a very watchable British stab at reviving the series, with Louis Hayward cast once again after a 15-year gap as Simon Templar after his very first appearance in the RKO series of eight.

This time The Saint is on the trail of a gang of professional gamblers and the blackmailer who killed one of his old flames. With its neat plot and decent sly sense of humour, it is entirely entertaining, if only mildly. Though Hammer Films hoped to revive the series, there was no call for any more of The Saint until the hit Roger Moore Sixties TV show (1962-1969).

An ideal Hayward is aloofly smooth and suitably chilly in a role he created in the original film, The Saint in New York (1938). And there’s a really good true Brit cast to support him, Naomi Chance as Carol Denby, Sydney Tafler as Max Lennar, Charles Victor as Chief Inspector Claud Teal, Harold Lang, Diana Dors, Jane Carr, William Russell (then billed as Russell Enoch), Fred Johnson, Russell Napier, Sam Kydd, John Wynn, George Margo and Ian Fleming. It is the first and last Saint film to feature the character of The Saint’s Valet Hoppy Uniatz (played by Thomas Gallagher), Templar’s assistant in the 1940s-era Saint books.

The film is an original work by British screenwriter Allan MacKinnon, not based directly on any of story by Charteris, who still had a percentage in the film’s profits however.

In 1960, a Franco-Italian film Le Saint mène la danse, with Felix Marten playing The Saint, was released with limited success. The next English-language cinema film featuring The Saint was not until 1997, with Val Kilmer playing Simon Templar in The Saint, again with limited success.  In 1978, the TV series was revived as Return of the Saint, starring Ian Ogilvy as Templar.

The Saint and its books have a fan club created originally by Leslie Charteris for the fans of the series, now under the control of honorary chairmen Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3228

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