Review of The Falcon Takes Over

I got up at dawn to catch a 6.10 TV screening of this strictly as a Chandler buff. I had long known of it, of course, but never seen it. I had also heard of the Falcon franchise and it seemed reasonable that the Chandler novel would require amendement in order to accommodate whatever format the Falcon series had established. In the event it proved to be a melange: the first obvious discrepancy was the locale, Chandler's Los Angeles had been shipped intact to New York, presumably the established stanping ground of the Falcon; bizarrely half the characters retained Chandler's names - Moose Malloy, Jesse Florian, Ann Riorden, Jules Amthor, but others had been altered slightly - Laird Brunette became Laird Burnett, Lindsay Marriott became Quincey Marriott - or totally - the femme fatale was no longer Mrs Grayle but someone totally fictitious. Whilst Chandler's Marlowe was not above cracking wise with low-key dialogue here The Falconh's sidekick, Allen Jenkins, goes out for blatant laffs and even James Gleaso's detective employs a serial catch-phrase to his own clearly retarded side-kick. For 65 minutes it's not as bad as it might be. That same year, a second Chandler novel, The High Window, was also given the business as Time To Kill, another I have yet to catch up with.