The Falcon Strikes Back

In his first movie starring as the suave Falcon, Tom Conway is accused of murder and the theft of a quarter of a million dollars in war bonds. Besides Cliff Edwards and Richard Loo as his minions, there are the usual RKO starlets and Edgar Kennedy in a straight role as a puppeteer.

It's a fairly good little mystery from a story by Stuart Palmer and direction by Edward Dmytryk, and a limited number of sets that we've seen before: the hotel lobby, the pool, and so forth. The economy that this series was made with made it quite profitable for RKO, and it cleared almost $200,000 after expenses. It also have Edgar Kennedy a chance to do some straight acting. He was best known as a screen comic, beginning with Keystone, and having starred in his own series of shorts from RKO for ten years at this point. You may recognize him as the peanut seller in DUCK SOUP doing his patented slow burn. Here, he's definitely creepy.