The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance (1941)

Absolutely brilliant

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This Lone Wolf adventure starts out with a bet between Michael Lanyard, the Wolf (Warren William) and Inspector Crane (Thurston Hall) that Lanyard can't stay out of trouble for 24 hours. Guess who wins. A private detective (Regis Toomey) falls nine stories outside Lanyard's hotel room. The detective was working on a case involving a special train car designed by Johnny Baker (Lloyd Bridges) that is holding treasury plates and can't be broken into.Everyone, of course, thinks Lanyard is the bad guy though he's on the side of right as he and his butler Jamison (Eric Blore) enter the case, which involves murder and kidnapping. The film has a neat sequence on a train as Lanyard works to save the day.Nice entry into the series, with Warren William his usual laid back self and Eric Blore adding a lot of humor. Recommended.

There was a bit more comedy in this film from The Lone Wolf Series. The Lone Wolf as played by Warren William and his valet Jamison who is Eric Blore after being innocently trapped in a device to discourage bank robbers bet Inspector Thurston Hall that they can't go 24 hours without getting in some kind of trouble. That's a stupid bet on William's part because this whole series is The Lone Wolf getting into all kinds of scrapes and the police not believing he's gone legitimate.This time trouble comes in the form of private detective Regis Toomey being shot and falling nine stories to his death outside William's hotel room. Toomey was on a case involving a gang trying to rob a newly designed train car invented by Lloyd Bridges. It opens with a combination and an attempt to break in without knowing the combination will result in poison gas killing you. A bit extreme I think, but the first cargo this car is carrying is treasury plates and lots of crooks would like to get their hands on those.It's the usual run of things for William and Blore trying to catch the crooks in this case a gang led by Henry Wilcoxon and Walter Kingsford and trying to stay a step ahead of the cops who always think William is the bad guy. It's not much of a challenge in the case of Fred Kelsey who is Thurston Hall's sidekick and the butt of every gag in the film. Kelsey is one of those dumb flatfoots who graduated from the Keystone Police Academy and it's almost cruel what William and Blore do to him in every film.Fans of the Lone Wolf series and Warren William should definitely like The Lone Wolf Takes A Chance. Incidentally he does lose the bet and pays off, sort of.

One of the biggest problems I have with most B-detective series films of the 1930s and 40s are how stupid the police are in the films. After a while it just seems a bit annoying that the police are stupider than tacos!! Because of this cliché, I was happy to see that not only were the police reasonably smart in this film, but the leading man (Warren William) was actually pretty stupid himself on occasion--particularly towards the beginning of the film. Early on, Michael Lanyard (William) is in his bathroom when a detective begins banging on his window from the outside--considering that Lanyard lives high up in a high-rise apartment building, this SHOULD have gotten Lanyard's attention! And, when the cop tries desperately to tell Lanyard that a man is being kidnapped in the adjoining apartment, Lanyard closes the window on the poor guy!!! Then, a shot naturally rings out and the cop falls to his death. People assume Lanyard is responsible--and in a way he really was! Now despite this brain aneurysm, Lanyard spends the rest of the film intelligently trying to solve the crime and he's very ably assisted by his valet, played by the wonderful Eric Blore. Blore was always excellent in the Lone Wolf films in which he appeared, but in this one he seems even funnier than usual AND actually proves to be pretty helpful--something B-detective sidekicks seldom are! By the way, the kidnap victim happens to be a very young Lloyd Bridges. He'd done a few other B-detective films, but only in tiny bit parts (such as a bus driver in a Boston Blackie film). Here, he gets a pretty good chance to act even though he is tied up most of the time!! The film has a good and complex plot that is relatively easy to follow, excellent acting and is just plain fun to watch. A very good example of the genre that would have merited an 8 if Lanyard hadn't been so gosh-darn stupid in the beginning!

Another good Lone Wolf entry, maybe only marred by too many slapstick moments at the beginning - but I never expect anything less from Fred Kelsey! The handsome young couple in here were Lloyd Bridges in his 1st credited film and June Storey who was managing without Gene Autry for a change.Warren William again plays Michael Lanyard the Lone Wolf, ex-jewel thief who has minded his own business for 10 minutes when a man is murdered by gangsters outside his 9th floor apartment window. His inadvertent help in the incident doesn't seem to faze him one bit, it's something that would definitely bother me! He and his ever effervescent butler Eric Blore are instantly mixed up and while they're chasing the baddies who've kidnapped an inventor the police are chasing them for the homicide. There's some nice scenes on a train pre North By Northwest where the Lady Vanishes becomes the Inventor Vanishes before the film swerves into an crumbly old dark house setting.With a continuously "inventive" storyline and fast pace it was one of the better and longer LW's and well worth watching for those of us who like b&w comedy mystery b pictures from the '40's.