Barbados Quest

This B-film from producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman is very much in the style of their later television success The Saint. Indeed, Tom Conway had played The Saint on American radio and was best known for The Falcon, an identical character, in a series of 1940s B-films he had inherited from his brother George Sanders, who had also donned the halo. Like those films, this British effort was distributed by RKO and sticks so closely to the formula that it is almost indistinguishable from a Falcon film, but with names changed and the setting switched to England, and the plot concerning stamps - forged, rare and stolen.

Conway is as good as ever as Tom 'Duke' Martin, with his Errol Flynn-like good looks and suave, twinkly-eyed demeanour - though, at 51, was beginning to show his age. As with the Falcon series, he has a stout, former crook for a comical sidekick, now played by reliable B-film regular Michael Balfour. Elsewhere, Brian Worth as Blake is conceited, vaguely sinister and reminiscent of a young Dennis Price, while John Horsley is excellent in another of his many detective portrayals.

However, while the counterfeit racket is a neat one and a car chase perks things up in the middle, the plot is somewhat convoluted and the viewer must keep track of which is the real stamp. The villain is more or less known from the outset and the interest comes from how Tom makes sense of it all, so there is little consistent suspense. I saw it twice before I understood everything, so can only imagine how cinema-goers felt on seeing it only once.

Such quibbles aside, this is a functional B-film and a must-see for fans of The Falcon. A sequel, Breakaway, was released the next year. Both films were a success, mostly due to the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies they were paired with, and a television series was apparently even mooted, though did not materialise.