Popular reviews

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  Review by loureviews ★★★½ 8

  #30 in Bette Davis - 90 films.

  "Honey, it blows!"

  This film gets rather short shrift from those who see it as the inferior title of the three versions filmed from 'The Maltese Falcon'.

  So here are ten reasons why I think it is worth your while:

  1. It has the gloriously sleazy Warren William in the Sam Spade role. He's a crumpled, bargain basement 'tec, a bedfuddled lady-killer. He's charming and funny, and he is totally bats.

  2. It shares a screenwriter with the 1931 version of the story (known as variously 'The Maltese Falcon' and 'Dangerous Female'), in Brown Holmes.

  3. It shares a cinematographer with the 1941 version (Arthur Edeson was director of photography on the classic…

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  Review by B E R T ★★½

  Bit of a nothing one if I’m being honest. Bette looked very pretty here though, and I liked her outfits. The supporting actress, Marie Wilson, was very entertaining and reminded me so much of Samara Weaving.

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  Review by cassandra ★★½

  A blonde Bette Davis holding a gun is one of the greatest things ever put on screen. Everything else, however, was mediocre and unmemorable.

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  Review by C4rlo5 ★★½

  Here we have the second movie of The Maltese Falcon, it’s entertaining but I feel like it’s the worse of the three that were made about the story. It’s the less popular too.

  In this case instead of being a Falcon is a trumpet full of jewelry about what the plot treats of. The script is different and it has more and different backgrounds than the other two movies.

  I felt like this is the most confusing one, I was focused and I’m not very sure about the murderers and some characters that appeared, it wasn’t really clear or at least it wasn’t for me.

  If you are interested in it just watch the most popular one, made in 1941, the other…

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  Review by d! 🐈 ★★½

  disappointed due to not enough bette davis

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  Review by Barry Daulton ★★★ 2

  The Maltese Trumpet or rather Satan Met a Lady. Davis is really good and by far the best part of this adaptation. Still no where close the 1941 classic film. Worth watching really for either Davis or to see another lesser version. Still if you only watch one, it had better be the 1941 version.

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★

  The reputation of this snarky, unfaithful adaptation of The Maltese Falcon is smothered by Huston's perfect, and faithful 1941 version that kicked off film noir. It’s surprising then to consider that Warners saw The Maltese Falcon in 1936 not as a hardboiled game-changer, but as an opportunity for quick comedy-mystery remake to cash in on the success of the The Thin Man.

  They change all the character names, but all their quadruple-crossing each other becomes farce. Hardboiled Spade becomes a gloriously sebaceous lech Shane played by William Warren. The Fat Man transitions to a fat lady. When Goddard said all you need is a girl and a gun, he might have been thinking of a young Bette Davis with a pearl dress-pistol in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And the dingus all desire is no longer a falcon but transparently symbolic ram's horn.

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  Review by Nick Langdon ★½ 4

  So this is a strange one. As I noted last week when talking about the first adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, the 1931 pre-Code film, a few years later Warner Bros. wanted to re-release that movie but were denied by the Hays office because of some (very) mild lewdness and some (very) vague suggestions of homosexuality. So instead WB commissioned a fresh take on the novel, this time playing it as a comedy, and, well, it simply does not work. It's not just that they've changed all the character names, and instead of the Maltese Falcon the MacGuffin is now Charlemagne's horn (which people refer to as "French saxophone" amongst other monikers) stuffed with jewels. No, it's just…

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  Review by PUNQ ★★★½ 7

  The comedy version of The Maltese Falcon! And it's the farce approach which makes this version a little gem of a movie! For those that are familiar with The Maltese Falcon story through the Bogart '41 version probable would have a hard time accepting this because it's a silly movie and doesn't have the thrilling edge that Bogart and company added to their re-work of the original '31 adaptation.

  
  Satan Met a Lady doesn't try to imitate and rather goes off in 'free spirit' mode with gags, snappy lines and pure energy! Warren William was awesome here! He was in such a playful mood one couldn't help but continually laugh at his antics! He didn't take anything serious, probable not…

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  Review by mattstechel ★★½

  Not great--it's a little too light-hearted/loosey-goosey to take seriously as a detective story if I were to be honest, but it's interesting on its own just for how differently The Maltese Falcon story gets played here. It's totally going for some wacky madcap comedy/farce thing (and instead of a falcon, everyone's after this ram's horn) and leading man Warren William is continually laughing at his own one liners (sometimes he's laughing as he's delivering them) which is you know the exact opposite of Bogart's delivery. It's alright, it's clearly going for a muuuuccch different vibe than the better known version, but like it's absolutely baffling at times to see how light and airy this all is, it's almost completely weightless…

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  Review by AuteurTheory ★★★½

  The second film adaptation of “The Maltese Falcon”. Oddly, it’s a goofy comedy. 
  Warren William is no Humphrey Bogart, but this version does have one interesting wildcard: Bette Davis! She provides the center of the film, making sure it doesn’t go too comedically off the rails. I was also very entertained by Marie Wilson, who plays the secretary. 
  Bogart wasn’t exactly distraught with his partner’s death, but William thinks it’s downright hilarious. Actually, he’s giddy throughout the flick. He flips between funny and annoying. 
  In comparison to John Huston’s film, SATAN MET A LADY is completely inconsequential. Taken on its own terms, it’s a fairly amusing crime comedy.

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★½

  Warner Brothers led the field in recycling old material and within the space of ten years they had adapted Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon no less than three times, most memorably with the John Huston/Humphrey Bogart version in 1941.

  This is the second adaptation, renamed and with the object of desire being a hunting horn instead of a jewel-encrusted falcon, but still recognisably Hammett's story; the difference here being that this is a more light hearted, tongue-in-cheek attempt with Warren William having a blast in the 'Bogie' role, not taking it too seriously, romancing the ladies and generally having a whale of a time!

  Bette Davis is glammed up for the Mary Astor part and is good value as always…