User Reviews

This film is very typical of the Saint films starring George Sanders--offering few major surprises but also providing sold B-movie entertainment. As usual, the Saint is his dapper and entertaining self and he's assisted by Paul Guilfoyle as "Pearly Gates", his sidekick.

The film concerns trying to get some super-valuable stamps which to their rightful owner in Palm Springs. It seems that the person with the stamps in New York was killed by someone wanting the stamps for themselves. Why the stamps were smuggled out of Europe in the first place is quite interesting, though it's sad that RKO didn't want to offend the Nazis by ever mentioning that the country in question must have either been Germany or one of the nations conquered by Germany. This is because Hitler refused to allow anyone to take anything of value out of the country. Jews and other "undesireables" were forced to choose to leave with nothing or remain behind with their possessions and hope for the best. The film ALLUDED to this but never mentioned Germany or the Nazis. And, when agents of this unnamed country come to America to try to recover these stamps at any cost, once again Germany is never mentioned--even when this included murder. You must remember that this film came out just before the US entered WWII and a few film makers were still hedging their bets--not wanting to offend the Nazis. Sad, indeed, but this should help explain why this aspect of the plot is so vague. After all, it wasn't like the British or Portuguese or Swiss would send agents to another country to kill in order to recover property! The only other objection I have to the script is that with $200,000 in stamps, you'd THINK they'd come up with a better way to get them to their rightful owner than just having Simon Templer carry them all the way from New York to Palm Springs! Maybe arrange to have a police escort, or leave them in a safe in New York and then wire the heir about them--something other than to rely on one person to make it safely to California AND prevent the heir from also being murdered.

Now if you ignore all this, the film is entertaining. The dialog is the usual great dialog, the plot interesting and the conclusion very good indeed. While far from perfect, it's about what you'd expect from a B-movie of the era--watchable and exciting.

...because this rather mute sluggish Saint seemed like he definitely needed a vacation! My spoiler warning is for the previous film "The Saint Takes Over", so if you've seen that one, read on without fear.

This was the last Saint film in which George Sanders played the title role, and I liked all of the others a great deal. The previous entry, "The Saint Takes Over", would seem in retrospect a perfect exit point for Sanders as the Saint as he solves the crime in his normal efficient manner, partakes in an extra generous helping of very dark comedy, exonerates and seals his friendship with Inspector Henry Fernack (Jonathan Hale), and comes as close to truly becoming involved in an affair of the heart as he has in any of the prior films only to lose his lady fair to a criminal's bullet. After all of that, seeing a victorious but rather forlorn Saint wander off into the darkness whistling his trademark tune would seem like a perfect ending to the George Sanders era of the saga.

The problem is, in this fifth and final entry for Sanders, he isn't forthcoming with his usual wit and wisdom and seems like he almost needs to be prodded to speak, the mystery isn't that intriguing, and Palm Springs is just too sunny a place for someone like Simon Templar who seems like he should be living in the shadows and climbing through windows in the dark. Not to mention he is knocked out cold multiple times by various assailants, only to be rescued by sidekick Pearly Gates.

I'd recommend this one for George Sanders and Saint Film completists only. I'd rate it as very average B mystery fare.

" . . . without scrambling a few eggs." Most people appreciate having Old King Herod to kick around as the Bad Guy in their X-Mas Pageants, since his slaughter of all but one of the Star-struck babes adds a zesty bittersweet poignant touch to the Nativity Tale. Similarly, THE SAINT movie franchise from the mid-1900s exalts in racking up scads of collateral damage. "Simon Templar" may not be toting a military-style assault rifle, but he might as well be randomly spraying bullets around from such a firearm, if THE SAINT IN PALM SPRINGS is a valid sample of his cinematic handiwork. Simon brushes shoulders with an uncle on an important errand for the niece, a local cop, and a blonde equestrian chick. They ALL drop dead at his feet. I think that there's an old hymn that starts out, "For all the Saints, who from their Templars rest . . . " and THE SAINT IN PALM SPRINGS helps me to understand this previously obscure lyric. However, YOU can rest assured that when Simon comes to YOUR neighborhood, all is NOT well!

Inspector Fernack asks Simon's help transporting a trio of extremely-rare stamps valued around $200,000 from New York City to Palm Springs, California. It seems they were smuggled out of an unnamed country in Europe (no doubt NAZI Germany, Hollywood was very antsy about getting political before WW2 actually broke out), and turning cash into easily-smuggled stamps was the only way the family involved could avoid losing everything they had. But Simon winds up being a lousy bodyguard, as the man he meets is almost immediately murdered, his train compartment is searched en route, and a series of assaults, robberies & murders rack up once he reaches his destination. He gets some help from his old acquaintance "Pearly" Gates, now on probation and working as a hotel detective, who's desperate not to go to prison if and when things start going wrong.

Jonathan Hale's Fernack is only in the story at the start, while Wendy Barrie appears as her 3rd character in the series. I cannot bring myself to believe Fernack would have acted the way he did at the beginning-- putting out a BOGUS arrest order for Templar concerning a NON-existent murder! That's just not his style at all, and gets the movie off on a bad foot. Simon doesn't quite seem himself this time, as he's far too clueless to what's going on around him, who's doing what, and even when cooperating directly with the local police chief, is still blamed for how badly things are going. Plus, his wardrobe is far too average. The only one of the crooks involved with any personality at all is murdered halfway thru by one of the others, and at the end, it's not so much who was the main villain, as how many, as it appears half the guests at the hotel were all part of the gang!

RKO had a really dodgy track record with their SAINT series, pretty much alternating every other film between very good and... NOT. It's come to my attention that, as has been happening too many times for my liking, I've run across two DRASTICALLY-different behind-the-scenes stories about what went on between RKO and SAINT author Leslie Charteris. The current, widely-popular story, is that RKO got tired of paying Charteris so much for the rights to The Saint, and so stopped doing the films and began doing a somewhat-similar (not really) series about the Falcon-- ALSO with George Sanders & Wendy Barrie-- and Charteris sued them for plagiarism. However, this is NOT what I read many years ago!

The story I read started when writer Michael Arlen created a character named "Gay Stanhope Falcon", who appeared in a single novel, "The Gay Falcon" in 1940. Aside from there being an earlier character called "Michael Waring", also known as "The Falcon", created by Charles H. Huff, who appeared in 3 novels from 1936-38, Arlen was SUED by Charteris for plagiarism, which would seem to explain why "Gay" only ever appeared in a single novel. Meanwhile, Charteris was VERY unhappy with how RKO was handling their SAINT series (I don't blame him, only 2 out of Sanders' 5 Saint films are really worth watching), and TOOK BACK the rights. At which point, RKO decided to thumb their nose at Charteris, and began their FALCON series, almost certainly knowing that it was based on a character whose author Charteris had already sued! Charteris, meanwhile, worked out a deal with another studio IN ENGLAND, who produced 2 more SAINT films, both set IN ENGLAND, and which were distributed by RKO (so RKO wound up making money off them anyway).

I'm sure people will argue over this... but the story I just described makes MUCH MORE sense, to me!

Anyway, the biggest problem with ...IN PALM SPRINGS is that's it's DULL. When you have an actor as terrific as George Sanders and somehow manage to make a movie this boring, there's obviously a problem. The next installment would be a HUGE improvement... in my view!

...and the plot is not one of them.

The first reason to watch this film in George Sanders. I always enjoy seeing Sanders on screen, even in a bad movie (and this is a pretty poor B movie). The second reason to watch is the supporting performance by Paul Guilfoyle as the fumbling house detective (or future inmate). Guilfoyle is a hoot here. The rest of the cast...nothing that will set the world (or the nitrate film) on fire.

As far as the plot...this is actually the first Saint film I ever watched. I thought the Saint was supposed to be clever. He bumbles his way through this film, perhaps tripping over plot holes; who wrote this feeble story line? In this film The Saint makes one amateurish goof after another.

I'm still glad I watched it...but it won't get a second viewing by me.

Spoilers herein.

There are a few things I really enjoy in thinking about film. One is comparing remakes and sequels to their originals. Its odd how some work and some don't. And those that work often work for completely different reasons. The Alien series are four films as different from each other as any are from this.

Another joy is comparing projects that fail that have almost the same recipe as those that succeed, or are thought to succeed. This movie features William Powell in pretty much the same character he had in several projects at about the same time. Many, like this one, had A-list actresses. The writing isn't particularly different from one project to the next.

It seems almost that 'The Thin Man' was accidentally good. And this, accidentally bad.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.