The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

The Falcon in Hollywood is one of the best of the original RKO Falcon series, with the hackneyed plot more than compensated for with the breezy script, debonair star, and his sassy sidekick. In addition, we also get a fascinating behind the scenes tour of the RKO backlot.

This time the Falcon is on vacation, in Tinseltown, enjoying a relaxing day at the races. However, within minutes of the opening credits he is being questioned by police detectives and approached by beautiful women. Before you can say "how does he do that?", he is embroiled in a murder mystery involving a shady businessman, a neurotic, superstitious Shakespeare quoting movie producer and film that seems to be cursed.

The script keeps our hero busy locking horns with the police, the criminals, the filmmakers and the actresses. Helping and hindering in equal measure in the faithful sidekick role is cabbie Billie (Veda Ann Borg).Although the part is played by a woman, the character is pretty gender neutral and, refreshingly, she is not presented as merely a love interest who occasionally screams, but as great comic relief. 

Given the subject matter and setting, The Falcon in Hollywood qualifies as a film about filmmaking, with the focus on the behind-the-scenes drama as much as any taking place in front of the camera. With the ruthless scheming producer, autocratic director and pompous diva actors, it is fascinating to see how the movie world sees itself.

The Falcon in Mexico (1944)

The Falcon in Mexico is the ninth entry in RKO's Falcon series and sees a change of location/stock footage/backdrops, with pleasantly entertaining results.

As usual, our freelance crime-fighting mystery solving hero Tom Lawrence aka The Falcon (played for the sixth time by Tom Conway) gets dragged into the mystery in an amusingly implausible manner, one that us mere mortals can only dream of. Within seconds of kissing his girlfriend goodnight at her apartment, he finds himself lip-locked with a mysterious woman named Dolores in order to shield her from a passing police officer, then helping her break into an art gallery, to recover a painting that she has recently modeled for – even though the artist, Humphrey Wade, has supposedly been dead for over a decade. Dolores promptly disappears just as the Falcon finds the body of the gallery owner. Now wanted for murder, Lawrence teams up with Wade's daughter Barbara and travels to Mexico to clear his name and find out whether reports of Wade's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Conway is a suave as ever, playing the Falcon as seeming amused and bemused by events, but never fazed by them. As usual, he has a sidekick, Manuel, a stereotypical laid-back Mexican, who helps Lawrence negotiate the mean streets of a strange country, and who may not be all he seems, as his character takes on more significance later in the story (the sidekick also has a sidekick, in the shape of his son, basically a mini-Manuel)

The script saunters along at an appropriately relaxed pace, but does stick to the plot without getting sidetracked, with the exception of a few weak musical numbers. Given the brief running time of these sort of films (typically 65-70 minutes), it does leave the denouement feeling rushed, and the killer almost arbitrary. Nevertheless, there is enough entertainment along the way to make that not too much of a problem.

Interestingly, an oft repeated – and never confirmed – legend about this film concerns the stock footage, which is supposedly taken from Orson Welles' unfinished documentary about Brazil, It's All True. Whether this is true or not, what we see is very well shot and certainly a step above the usual stock footage standards.