The Saint's Double Trouble

You have to be willing to suspend disbelief whenever you watch films like THE SAINT'S DOUBLE TROUBLE, in which GEORGE SANDERS (as "The Saint") discovers that the police are really looking for his exact double who's been committing a number of crimes involving diamond smuggling and a mummy from Egypt. To make sure that audiences know which man we're watching, they have "The Saint" whistling his famous tune as a sort of identification bracelet...but unless you're a fan of the series, you may be missing the clue.

JONATHAN HALE is a nice addition to the cast as Inspector Fernack who, for awhile, is just as confused as everyone else as to the identity of the real criminal. HELENE WHITNEY makes a bland leading lady as the blonde damsel in distress and BELA LUGOSI has a nothing role as a man called The Partner, a colorless part that could have been filled by any nondescript actor in search of work.

There are plenty of escapes for Sanders who is seen narrowly drowning when tied up in a motorboat, leaping onto the back of moving autos to keep track of the kidnapped heroine and making various narrow escapes from the law by devious means. It's his third time as Simon and he looks comfortable enough in the double role, although all the plot twists and turns are a bit hard to swallow with the police and the criminals being unbelievably dumb.

Summing up: Despite obvious drawbacks, it's a fun caper to watch and moves briskly toward a satisfying ending if you're a fan of the series.

George Sanders, in fact two George Sanders, arrive in the City of Brotherly Love to investigate a nice little diamond smuggling racket. But what a place to smuggle diamonds, in the sarcophagus of a long dead Egyptian mummy. What interests Simon Templar however is the fact that the head of the racket is a dead ringer for him and also played by George Sanders. He might well be responsible for the unsavory reputation the Saint has in some quarters.

Jonathan Hale as Inspector Fernack is in from New York and as the most authoritative expert on the activities of Simon Templar is drafted by the Philadelphia police in the person of Donald MacBride. In fact Fernack knows of a telltale scar on the wrist of the real Templar and can tell them apart. That fact proves most handy.

Bela Lugosi has an inexplicably small role as 'the partner' in the smuggling activities. I'm betting the editors at RKO probably left a lot of Lugosi on the cutting room floor. The film would have been better had Lugosi been left in.

As it is it's an OK B programmer and a plus for fans of Leslie Charteris's modern Robin Hood.

Simon Templar (George Sanders), known as "The Saint", whom everyone believed to be in Egypt, suddenly turns up back in Philadelphia, at the home of his friend, Professor Bitts (Thomas W. Ross). Although the reasons aren't given in the film, apparently there is some disagreement over Simon's moral character. When bodies start turning up with incriminating evidence pointing to The Saint, the police try to track him down. However, it turns out that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

I probably shouldn't be reviewing this film until I watch it again (if I do), but I'll just revise my review then if appropriate. As it stands, I have to give this film a generous 4 out of 10.

While The Saint's Double Trouble has promise--nice black and white photography, some good performances (especially by Sanders and Jonathan Hale as inspector Fernack), one of my favorite actors/character actors, Bela Lugosi, has an odd part in it, and the story seems like it should be interesting--the script was a disaster. Part of the problem may have been that this is apparently an entry in a long-running series, and there's no way it's going to make sense out of the context of the series. I haven't seen any of the other films yet, so I have to review this one in isolation.

The script ends up being largely loose threads. Important parts of the backstory are neither shown nor explained. There is a mummy (the presence of which got me very interested in the beginning) that ends up being meaningless to the plot (the little use it had could have been much more easily accomplished by another means). At one point, half of a knife makes an appearance as a token of a mystery, but it is never mentioned again. Characters completely drop out of the film.

Worst of all, the plot hinges on the appearance of Boss Duke Bates, a look-alike for Simon Templar, also played by George Sanders. As can be expected, there are a number of points that rest on confused identities (that's the bulk of the film, actually). The problem is that by the end, I was also so confused that I had no idea which appearance of George Sanders was supposed to be which character, and confusion on this didn't seem to be the point of the conclusion.

Again, maybe this is a fine chapter in a longer story when viewed with the other Saint films, in order. But to start here, I can't recommend The Saint's Double Trouble. It doesn't work as a stand-alone film.

Unlike James Bond, the equally debonair Saint never made a successful transition to film from the fictional works of Leslie Charteris. Charteris hated all the film Saints - George Sanders, Hugh Sinclair and Leslie Howard. He thought that Cary Grant was the ideal choice for the role. But in the 1940s, the film industry would only make B-movies featuring the Saint. Since Cary Grant did not appear in B-movies, George Sanders got the role. He was popular in it at that time. Sanders always played suave cads extremely well. The Saint of the novels was also a suave cad, yet his creator did not approve of George Sanders. Charteris probably disliked Sanders because the latter did not physically resemble his creation. Roger Moore, the Saint of the small screen, came much closer to Charteris' ideal.

"The Saint's Double Trouble" is worth watching if you are Saint fan. If you like the sneering, sardonic George Sanders like I do, you will like it.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)

Fourth film in the Saint series from RKO has George Sanders playing dual roles: Simon Templar and his evil doppelganger, Duke! The Saint has 48 hours to prove it was Duke and not he that committed a murder. Guess what? He'll only need 47. This is a good entry in the series with Sanders having fun playing bad. It's very amusing to hear him say things like "You mugs," even if he makes little effort to hide his accent. Bela Lugosi is also in this but, unfortunately, he's not given much to do. He's just an associate of the evil double. Still it's cool seeing Lugosi playing in a non-horror role with an actor you don't normally see him with. Pretty Helene Reynolds is the obligatory would-be love interest. The camera is in love with her. After being absent in the last film, Jonathan Hale returns as the likable police inspector frenemy of the Saint. The rest of the cast includes Donald MacBride, Byron Foulger, Thomas W. Ross, John F. Hamilton, and Elliott Sullivan. Those last two play the evil double's henchman. They have some funny lines.

An enjoyable movie, mostly due to Sanders. The story isn't much to get excited about. It's never really explained why Saint has a double or what led Duke to know about him in the first place. Also, the Saint not seeming upset about the killing of the kindly old man who was a friend of his didn't sit right with me. Oh, and how cool is it that apparently back in the old days a guy could mail a mummy to another guy halfway around the world. And we think we have progress!