Leslie Charteris was apparently unhappy with the RKO films based on his Simon Templar character that were made in the late 30s and early 40s because they bore little similarity to his stories--just the titles and title character's name were often retained. I read that Charteris refused to allow further versions of his stories unless major changes were made. As a result, RKO did what you'd expect from a studio--changed the character's name and continued the series under a new name ("The Falcon"). However, they and Republic Pictures did not want to drop the idea of the Saint altogether, so they made a couple films in Britain with an entirely new cast. Part of this was, of course, to make Charteris happy but this was also done because a British law required that a certain percentage of films shown in the country must be domestically produced--hence many American companies, such as MGM, Warner and RKO bought or created British film companies. Most of these British productions were made on a shoestring budget and the parent companies didn't particularly care too much about the quality of the films, as they were never intended to be shown anywhere outside the UK--and they were only making them to get around British law.
Now some of these British-made films very good and many of them were downright dull and boring--about how I would characterize THE SAINT MEETS THE TIGER--dull and boring. I know that this film has a reasonably high rating on IMDb, but for the life of me it was a major struggle for me to watch this insipid film. While the American films were not faithful to Charteris' vision, they were indeed fun. This more "by the book" version forgot to include the fun. Sure, they weren't "authentic", but for my money I'd much rather watch George Sanders as the Saint than dull old Hugh Sinclair--who, unfortunately, has the charisma of a mop.
FYI--While I prefer the Americanized version of the Saint, the same cannot be said of James Bond. Just like the Charteris novels, most James Bond films have almost no similarity to the original Ian Fleming novels--just the titles and character name. However, I would LOVE to one day see a series based on the books, as they were far superior to the impossibly perfect Bond we've seen in the films.
