THE SAINT MEETS THE TIGER is the second film RKO made in Britain with a British cast with Hugh Sinclair in the title-role. The plot is a familiar one: the Saint (Hugh Sinclair) travels down to Cornwall to uncover a smuggling plot involving in which one million pounds of gold will leave the country. What makes this thriller worth watching, however, is its incidental pleasures: although much of it is shot in the studio, with quite obviously phony backgrounds, there are occasional sequences shot on location in Cornwall, where we get an authentic impression of what British seaside life was like during the middle of World War II. There are some notable performances from Wylie Watson as Horace, the Saint's faithful butler with a penchant for listening to gangster thrillers on the radio. When he is drawn into the action he takes every opportunity to assume the tough-guy role, pointing his loaded pistol at the villains. The eponymous Tiger/ Tidemarsh (Clifford Evans) comes across as a very clever mastermind - on the one hand he is more than willing to look after Pat Holm (Jean Gillie) and ensure that she comes to no harm; on the other hand he shows his true nature while trying to deal with his gang. The members of said gang are cleverly delineated, ranging from crooked financier Lionel Bentley (Dennis Arundell), whose facial expressions seldom change, even when he is holding the Saint at gunpoint; to Bittle (Charles Victor), a tough-guy with an accent combining South African clipped vowels and a Chicago twang. Needless to say they are outwitted at the end, leaving the Saint to walk off into the sunset with Pat on his arm, but one has to admire their ambition.
