A Texas sheriff is
gunned down by Sicilian gangster Joseph Palermo and his brother Tony. Deputy
Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III fatally shoots Tony and arrests Joseph. Chief
Wilson, Geronimo’s superior officer, assigns now-Sheriff Geronimo to extradite
the surviving Palermo to Italy. However, Palermo’s fellow Mafiosi have
the plane diverted to Malta and help him escape custody. Geronimo repeatedly
attempts to capture Palermo, despite frequent reprimands for his methods from
both Wilson and the Malta Police Department’s Superintendent Mifsud, who
eventually places Geronimo under house arrest in his hotel room. As part of a
ploy to escape, Geronimo asks the officer standing outside his door if there
was really a Falcon. The officer responds that there was, right before Geronimo fakes chest pains and then overpowers and ties him up. Wold Newton Family member Sam Spade’s account of his investigation
involving the Maltese Falcon was edited by Dashiell Hammett; since the officer
says that the statue actually existed, this film (which I discovered through one of my favorite shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000) takes place in the CU.
I remember watching this on MST3K too.
ReplyDeleteThe Knights Hospitaller really did give a falcon as tribute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute_of_the_Maltese_Falcon
Simon Greene's Nightside stories had a running joke about there being numerous fake Falcons. I remember reading a post online by a fan of the series who was asking what a Maltese Falcon was. I wanted to reach through the internet and slap the guy.
A storyline in Jon Sable had Sable searching for the Falcon, but in that case it was a prop from the Bogart movie. Speaking of First Comic characters, the Grimjack series had the Manx Cat which was an obvious tribute to the series. The first Mundern's Bar backup story in the comic had a cameo of Grimjack talking to what looked like a werewolf holding a statue of a black bird. Of course, the nature of the setting of Grimjack it could be a Falcon from any number of universes.