Satan Met a Lady (1936)

I just watched this so here's a review:

For those that don't know, this is the first remake of the original The Maltese Falcon. Unlike the original and the phenomenal remake 5 years later, this one is quite different. First, it's a comedy. Second, the plot is drastically changed. While pretty much the same stuff happens there is no longer a Maltese Falcon, but rather some stupid horn. The characters all have different names which was kind of dumb. Also, Joel Cairo is now an Englishmen and Mr. Gutman (the fat man) is now a woman.

As for my thoughts on the plot. It was terrible. Yeah, it had its moments that were similar to the book and movie it's based on, but the deviations were far too great. I don't mind huge deviations, but these were awful. The reviews say this is supposed to be a comedy of some sort but I didn't laugh once. I don't even recall any jokes that were supposedly in this movie. All I know is there were a lot of moments that just felt awful.

As for the acting, it wasn't great. It has Bette Davis who is a great actress, but she couldn't save this. In fact, she reportedly said this was the worst film of her career. I would certainly hope so as this was just plain awful. Honestly, she wasn't too bad here but the guy that plays Sam Spade (who has some other name not worthy of being looked up) is just terrible. He epitomizes the term suck acting. Every moment he was on screen made you want to hurt someone. The other principal cast members weren't much better.

Overall, this is absolutely awful. The film's only saving grace is my fondness of the remake 5 years later. Being able to sort of see parts of that film in here probably doubled this films score. That shouldn't have happened, but it did. Unless you are the biggest The Maltese Falcon fan there is there is absolutely no reason to watch this, it's horrible. In fact, this film is so bad that it is the worst film I've reviewed so far - worse than Topaz. Not only is it worse than Topaz, but it scores significantly worse than Topaz's 50/100. And believe me, this score is very generous.

42/100
F

UP NEXT: A while ago it was supposed to be Dark Passage but that didn't happen. Maybe I'll watch it for real this time.

Watch The Hottie and the Nottie and write a review for it. I'd love to know what you think of it.

kharmon wrote:

Watch The Hottie and the Nottie and write a review for it. I'd love to know what you think of it.

7th worst film all-time according to IMDb. Too bad it's 2008. I might watch one of these god-awful films at some point. I've only given out 2 F's so far and that's just not enough. Still, I can't just give out F's to films like North By Northwest - that just isn't right. Giving such a film an F (or even a D) would instantly take away all my credibility as a film critic (not that I have much anyways).

If you want a ridiculously bad movie that is so entertaining just due to the fact that it is soooo bad... Watch "The Suckling." In all aspects the movie should be an F... But it's so bad that you can't help loving it for its awfulness.

It might be hard to find, but I heard a rumor that it recently was released on DVD.

ScubatheHooD wrote:

If you want a ridiculously bad movie that is so entertaining just due to the fact that it is soooo bad... Watch "The Suckling." In all aspects the movie should be an F... But it's so bad that you can't help loving it for its awfulness.

It might be hard to find, but I heard a rumor that it recently was released on DVD.

IMDb gives it a 3.5 - that's a mediocre F.

Hey, you know a bit about films. Can you recommend a movie from pre-1970 (the older the better) that is really bad? Not bad in the sense it's not your type of movie (I mean most guys don't like Gone With the Wind), but bad in that it's just awful.

The Suckling sounds like something I'd watch