The Falcon Takes Over (1942)
Director: Irving Reis
Starring: George Sanders, Lynn Bari, James Gleason
Synopsis:
An escaped prisoner is looking for his old girlfriend and when his violent methods result in murder, the Falcon decides to take on the case.
Impressions:
If you didn't know anything about Farewell, My Lovely, this might just be taken as another entry in the Gay Falcon series, a passable little B flick, but if you're famiiar with the source material and other adaptations of it, this becomes a little more interesting. The idea of placing the gentleman detective Gay Lawrence in place of Philip Marlowe is funny enough, but this plays more of it straight than you might expect. The Falcon's assistant Goldy allows the workload to be divided and provides most of the comic relief, though how welcome that comic relief is will depend on your tastes. Ward Bond does a fair job of portraying Moose Malloy's physicality, but he comes off more as a typical mook rather than the stronger impressions left by later performances by Mike Mazurki in '47 and Jack O'Halloran in '75. I wasn't a fan of how Amthor was turned into more of a carnival sideshow sort of psychic and the subplot with Sonderborg is dropped entirely, so if you were hoping to see George Sanders tripping balls, you'll have to look elsewhere. At a mere 65 minutes, there's not really much time for all the pileup of subplots in the source, which may not be a bad thing, but they still could've done more to streamline the narrative. For what this is, it's a decent enough watch if you like this kind of story, but as an adaptation, it's pretty weak. Take it or leave it.
50/50