Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Hondo" director John Farrow directed George Sanders' initial incarnation of British-Chinese author Leslie Charteris' suave sleuth in "The Saint Strikes Back," and "Band of Angels" scenarist John Twist adapted Charteris novel "The Saint Meets His Match" with many changes of locale. Incidentally, Sanders didn't originate the intrepid character; that distinction belonged to actor Louis Hayward. Hayward starred in the first movie, director Ben Holmes" "The Saint in New York." Interestingly enough, Hayward encored as the halo clad hero in the 1953 film "The Saint's Girl Friday," long after not only Sanders, but also Hugh Sinclair had impersonated the fictional Robin Hood character. Sanders starred in five "Saint" sagas between 1939 and 1941 for RKO Pictures. Charteris himself felt that Sanders was miscast as his debonair gentleman protagonist, but he applauded Roger Moore in the role as a better fit. Meantime, during his prestigious career, Sanders went on to play another legendary shamus "The Falcon," before he relinquished that role to his brother Tom Conway. "The Saint Strikes Back" is a rather straight-forward crime thriller with the Saint living up to his own self-proclaimed description of himself as "the man who knows everything-just the man who knows the important things." Indeed, our hero knows ahead of time that the heroine he must save is not guilty of murder.In "The Saint Strikes Back," our adventure-prone protagonist dispatches a New York cop killer, Tommy Voss, in the Colony Club nightclub in San Francisco on New Year's Eve and sets out to save Val Travers (Wendy Barrie of "Dead End") who has suffered a lot of bad publicity since her father was framed for police corruption. After the dead man is found, some of the patrons scramble to leave, and Val is one of several. She encounters Simon Templar (Oscar winner George Sanders of "All About Eve") who is awaiting her just outside on the sidewalk. "Cabs are scarce tonight, aren't they?" is Templar's first line when he meets her. Templar prevents Val from being taken in by the police. After he pulls this stunt, Templar flies back to New York City to meet his own friend, Inspector Henry Fernack (Jonathan Hale of "Son of Pale Face"), who has been assigned to find Templar, while Simon outsmarts Fernack during a stopover in Fort Worth, Texas, on their transcontinental flight to San Francisco. The unfortunate policeman goes on a wild goose chase when cannot find Templar aboard the aircraft,and winds up missing his plane. He is left standing in the airport terminal with nothing but his pajamas and a dressing gown. Incidentally, Hale co-starred in the first "Saint" escapade and he reprised his role here.This Saint outing is adequate, and Twist gave Sanders some good lines that he utters with aplomb. Since I've never read a Charteris novel, I cannot understand what the author objected to about Sanders' performance, but the British actor seems born to play the role, and he appears to have a grand time doing it, savoring each of his loquacious lines.

THE SAINT STRIKES BACK, an early adaptation of a Leslie Charteris novel starring George Sanders, is a real chore to sit through. The problem with it is the script, which opts for talky and dull mystery shenanigans when instead it could have included some serial-style thrills and pulp adventures. Most of the film is set in a few rooms with a number of criminal characters double-crossing each other which is neither here nor there. As for the "striking" done by the Saint, we see him gun down a would-be assassin in an early scene and trap another with a thrown knife at the climax, but that's the extent of his heroism. Much of the film just sees him playing different criminal elements off each other.This RKO picture is stagy and static, and the print I saw had muffled sound. The film has about as much artistic inspiration as a typical Monogram programmer. Sanders is stiff as the titular secret agent, with only an occasional twinkle in his eye reminding us that he was once a popular actor. The rest of the performances aren't worth boring with. The most interesting part of the film is the comedy; the highlight a surreal dream sequence in which a man is haunted by lobsters. If only the rest of the film's imagination had been on par with this.

It's not too bad a b movie, with Sanders, Barrie, Hale, Cowen, Hamilton, Gargan, Fitzgerald and even Willie Best we could be either with Charlie Chan, Moto, the Falcon, Blackie, Holmes or the Saint etc. In other words you get the chance to spend another hour in the company of some old friends, from plain to urbane, murdering and being murdered - always a pleasure in my book.Barrie's a hard-boiled dame out to avenge and clear her framed and dead father, a police detective by planning and carrying out with her coterie a string of underworld assassinations. Which would surely have had the opposite effect! Sanders joins in the fun simply by dancing in the right club in the right place in the right city at the right time with the right lighting falling on both him and the first killer (at the right time!) and killing him.The story and acting's OK, the only gripe I've got is near the end with the hurried and almost laughable discovery of who the evil genius (Waldeman) was - did they almost forget about his relevance in the plot? That said, a solid entry in the series.

This is not George Sanders' best "Saint" movie by any stretch("The Saint in London" gets that honor). Instead we get an average low-budget mystery movie that has very few surprises. George Sanders is introduced to us as Simon Templar in this movie. Sanders plays him as a suave, urbane and sophisticated hero, rarely caught off guard("not the man who knows everything, just the man who knows the important things"). Unfortunately the script in this production lets him down. Not only is it less than engaging, it also tends to be needlessly confusing. Wendy Barrie plays the female lead(as she did in two other Sanders-Saint films)but she is much too stiff. I don't have a problem with her playing the character as a tough-as-nails femme-fatale but I think Barrie overdoes it and the result is that her character loses credibility. Neil Hamilton (commissioner Gordon on TV's Batman) plays one of Barrie's associates in crime like some kind of effeminate twit. This undermines what should be a strong bond between him and Barrie. The "surprise" ending is weak and anyone who has not guessed it well in advance has obviously not been paying attention throughout.There is one great sequence that almost makes the film worth seeing. It occurs when Inspector Fernack(Jonathan Hale) has a bout of indigestion and hallucinates about Lobsters riding trucks(!!). Salvator Dali eat your heart out.Above mentioned sequence and Sanders are the only reasons to bother with this one (unless you want to see Wendy Barrie chewing on the scenery). I give it 6 lobsters out of 10.