The Saint S01E07: The Arrow of God (1962) in Color — Starring Roger Moore & Elspeth March

The Saint S01E07: The Arrow of God (1962) — Buy This Classic in Color

First broadcast on 15 November 1962, “The Arrow of God” is the seventh episode of the first season of The Saint, the British mystery-adventure series produced by ITC. Directed by John Paddy Carstairs, the episode stars Roger Moore as Simon Templar, the debonair modern-day Robin Hood, alongside guest players Elspeth March, Anthony Dawson, Honor Blackman and Alec Mango. The hook is simple and irresistible: a wealthy newspaper magnate dies at a dinner party, and the only clue is a poisoned arrow that seems to have come from nowhere. This is classic early-sixties television — witty, twisty and effortlessly stylish — and it now survives in color. Own this classic movie in color as a DRM-free MP4 digital download for just €15.00.

Plot Summary

The episode opens in the elegant world of Fleet Street money and influence, where Simon Templar is a guest at a private dinner hosted by a wealthy newspaper proprietor. The atmosphere is civil on the surface, but the guest list is a gathering of people with grievances. Among them are figures from the newspaper’s past and present, each with a reason to resent the host’s power over their careers and reputations.

The evening turns when the host is struck down at his own table. What makes the death so strange is the means: an arrow, of the kind associated with archery, appears to have been the instrument of death. In a locked and closely watched house, no one saw a bow drawn and no one saw an archer. The police are quick to treat the death as suspicious, and the puzzle of how the arrow could have been delivered becomes the engine of the story.

Templar, as ever, is drawn in rather than pushed. He is not a policeman and he has no official standing, but he has an instinct for the moment when a respectable story is hiding an unrespectable one. He begins to work through the guests one by one, testing alibis, listening for the small inconsistencies that betray a prepared account, and watching how each person reacts to the suggestion that the arrow was not an accident of staging but a deliberate design.

The investigation widens beyond the dining room. Motives surface that reach back into the newspaper’s dealings — old favours, old humiliations, old debts that were never settled. The Saint finds that the dead man’s influence had touched every guest in the room, and that the arrow is not merely a murder weapon but a message, chosen precisely because it points somewhere the killer wants the investigation to look.

As the net closes, Templar narrows the field to the person whose story fits too neatly. The final movement of the episode turns on the mechanics of the crime: not who hated the victim, but who could physically have done it, and how. The answer is elegant, theatrical and entirely in keeping with the series’ love of a well-staged deception. What the ending finally answers is the question the whole episode has been circling: how do you kill a man in a room full of witnesses with a weapon that no one saw arrive?

Cast & Crew

Director: John Paddy Carstairs
Stars: Roger Moore, Elspeth March, Anthony Dawson, Honor Blackman, Alec Mango

Why Buy This Classic in Color?

The colorized restoration of “The Arrow of God” transforms a black-and-white studio drama into something closer to the world the characters actually inhabited. The dinner-party setting comes alive in warm lamplight and deep wood tones; the men’s dinner jackets and the women’s evening wear read as distinct fabrics rather than shades of grey; and the newspaper-office scenes gain the flat, fluorescent realism of early-sixties Fleet Street. For a story built on social hierarchy and appearances, colour is not decoration — it is information. You can see who is dressed for money and who is dressed for work, and the class tensions that drive the plot become visible at a glance. The restoration also reveals detail that monochrome flattened: the grain of the panelling, the sheen of a car bonnet, the precise shade of a poisoned arrow’s fletching. None of it distracts from Roger Moore’s performance, which remains the episode’s centre of gravity — the raised eyebrow, the easy charm, the sudden seriousness when the game turns dangerous. This colourised edition lets a new generation watch The Saint the way its audience imagined it. Buy it now at €15.00 with instant DRM-free MP4 download.

Historical Significance

The Saint ran on ITC from 1962 to 1969 and became one of the most successful British television exports of the decade, sold to networks around the world and turning Roger Moore into an international star. Moore’s Simon Templar — suave, unflappable, faintly amused by villainy — defined the template for the gentleman-adventurer that television would return to again and again. The series was based on the character created by Leslie Charteris, and its episodic structure made it ideal for syndication, which is precisely why it travelled so widely.

“The Arrow of God” belongs to the first season, when the production was still finding its rhythm and the guest casts were drawn heavily from the British stage and film pool. Honor Blackman, who appears here, was on the brink of the role that would make her a household name. Anthony Dawson brought a long career of screen villainy to the episode, and Elspeth March and Alec Mango were established players of stage and screen. Director John Paddy Carstairs had a substantial career in British film comedy and drama before moving into television, and his handling of the dinner-party set piece gives the episode a theatrical, almost drawing-room-mystery quality.

Episodes of this vintage survive in black and white, and for decades that is how audiences have seen them. Colorization brings “The Arrow of God” to new audiences who might otherwise pass over a sixty-year-old monochrome broadcast, and it restores a sense of period texture that the original transmission could not deliver.

Technical Details

• Format: MP4 / MKV digital download
• Resolution: Standard Definition
• Colorized: Professionally colorized from original black and white
• Audio: English original mono
• Runtime: 48 minutes
• DRM-free: Yes — watch on any device
• Instant download: Available immediately after purchase
• Price: €15.00 (token, rendered by the site)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Movie-Specific Questions

Q: Was “The Arrow of God” originally broadcast in colour?
A: No. Like the rest of the first season of The Saint, the episode was broadcast in black and white. This page offers a later professional colorized restoration, not a studio colour release.

Q: Who plays Simon Templar in this episode, and who are the guest stars?
A: Roger Moore stars as Simon Templar, the role he played across the entire series. The episode’s guest cast includes Elspeth March, Anthony Dawson, Honor Blackman and Alec Mango, with John Arnatt, Anne Sharp, Gordon Tanner, Thomas Baptiste and Pearl Prescod also appearing.

Q: Is this a full-length film or a single episode?
A: It is a single episode — season 1, episode 7 of The Saint, first broadcast on 15 November 1962 and running 48 minutes. It is sold here on its own as a colorized download.

Digital Download Questions

Q: What format is the download?
A: The film is delivered as MP4 and MKV files that play on virtually any device.
Q: Is there DRM on the file?
A: No. The download is completely DRM-free so you can watch it on any device without restrictions.
Q: How quickly can I watch after purchase?
A: Your download link is available instantly after payment, so you can start watching within minutes.

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