What a waste of my time!!!

Absolutely amazing

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Gotta' hand it to Warner Bros, they kept adapting Dasheill Hammett's twisted tale til they got it right. This version, shot some six years earlier than "The Maltese Falcon" can't decide whether it's a comedy or a mystery...and isn't very good as either. As detective Ted Shane, Warren William is so ludicrously blithe that his performance comes off as burlesque. I've been shot at. Ha ha. My, that was close. Isn't detecting fun? Bette Davis does somewhat better as the mystery woman who hires him to find a Saracen horn full of jewels, alternately vamping and double-crossing the private eye. Add Allison Skipworth and Arthur Treacher (yeah, the fish-and-chips guy) in roles that would eventually be better played by Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre and you have a movie that pleads to be re-made. Which fortunately it was.

True, it's based on Dashiel Hammet's "The Maltese Falcon," just like the Bogart movie a few years later, but the basics of the plot are about all they have in common. "Satan Met A Lady" is breezy and whimsical. As "Ted Shane," the private eye, Warren William is always chuckling and laughing. He finds humor in every situation and his dialog consists of wisecracks and flirtatious double entendres. He strides around, grinning in his long overcoat and wide-brimmed fedora. Brings to mind an opening line of an old novel: "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." Bette Davis as the character who would later become Brigid O'Shaugnessy, has little to do except respond in a pop-eyed fashion to William's antics. Joel Cairo is gone, replaced by Arthur Treacher as a ten-foot tall Englishman. The most interesting figure, so to speak, is the sexy blond, Marie Wilson, who has taken the part of Effie, Sam Spade's secretary. Wilson is dutiful but dumb. When William asks how she spells her last name, Murgatroyd, she has to stumble through it, letter by letter, and then jumps for joy when she gets it right.It's not a BAD movie. It's just very different from the John Huston version. "Satan Met A Lady" fits better into the genre of fast B-level detective stories that were so common in the 30s, often as second features. God knows the plot of the novel is confusing enough, but when the characters themselves don't really care much about it, the viewer is left deserted, marooned.I'll give one example of the difference in tone and then quit. In Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" (as in the novel), Miles Archer is lured into an alley and shot dead. Spade shows up, looks down at the body of his partner from a distance, then shrugs and moves away with no comment of importance and no display of emotion. Today, the city of San Francisco has a small brass plaque on the corner of a building that fronted the alley, memorializing the event. Bogart's behavior is entirely serious during the scene, and it adds another layer of mystery. The murdered body of his partner is lying at the foot of a hill but Bogart reveals nothing of his feelings. What's going on? In "Satan Met A Lady," William gets a phone call and shows up at the crime scene -- a cemetery this time, with his partner's legs sprawled awkwardly across a tomb stone. William shakes his head a bit, as if having discovered a hangnail, and the situation provides material for a joke: Well, at least if he's going to die, he found the most suitable place for it. The impression is not one of mystery, of feelings or thoughts withheld, but one of shallowness. William seems genuinely not to care.At any rate, if you're looking for a filmed version of the novel, you won't find it here. If you're looking for something that won't challenge you a great deal -- as long as you don't try following the anfractuous plot -- this may be your kind of movie.

Having seen the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon at least ten times, it is kind of hard to swallow the story as kind of a madcap comedy.The film stars one Warren William, who I frankly never heard of, as the private eye, here renamed Ted Shane. Bette Davis plays Valerie Purvis, the Brigid character, and in the film's most hilarious part, Arthur Treacher, playing Anthony Travers (Joel Cairo in the '41 version).Davis, as widely reported, was given lackluster parts at this point in her career, and it definitely shows here. She does very little here and there is no indication of her being as dangerous as the character portrayed in the '41 version.To get back to Warren William. He was probably somewhat of a big name in the 30s but it certainly doesn't show here. His character is wildly uneven when it comes to what he is supposed to be. If his character is comedic, then he isn't that funny? If his character is supposed to be a threat, he is as much a threat as Dennis was a menace.The best parts are played by Marie Wilson as Miss Murgatroyd and the aforementioned Arthur Treacher as Anthony Travers. Wilson's "How you doing" is oddly hysterical for some reason. Don't let me explain why, and Treacher has a funny scene with William discussing the trumpet (this movie's version of the falcon).All you can say is nice try but I totally agree with the naysayers of this version. Stick with the Bogart film.

The second version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon came in the wake of the big success of a cinematic adaptation of another of the author's novels, The Thin Man. So here we get a comic version starring a wise-cracking gentleman, Warren William (who had played Julius Caesar in DeMille's Cleopatra). The comedy is sometimes desperate. It's played WAY over the top. If they had toned in down a tad, and maybe got William Powell instead of Warren William, it would have been a great film. Which would have been terrible because then, if it had been a success, Warner Brothers wouldn't have deigned to remake it five years later. We wouldn't have the 1941 masterpiece, John Huston's career might have went an entirely different way, and film noir wouldn't have developed as we know it. Film history might look damn different just because of this goofy little adaptation! It's generally considered the worst of the three adaptations, but I really liked it. It's a heck of a lot better than the stale '31 version, and it stands as a nice little companion piece to the '41 version. A couple of the actors I really liked, notably Alison Skipworth in the Gutman role (all character names have been changed, by the way, but I'll keep to the originals), Arthur Treacher as Cairo, and Maynard Holmes as Wilmer (shockingly uncredited where several less important characters were!). The best of the best, though: Marie Wilson in the Effie role. Oh. You thought I was going to say Bette Davis. Nah. She's probably the least of the three Brigids. The secretary role is expanded a bit, and she's almost made Spade's love interest. Wilson gives a very cute comic performance. Well worth checking out.