Film Perfection

Expected more

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) goes undercover as an expert on rare books and winds up accused of murder by Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane). You could pretty much write your own Boston Blackie plot description similar to this and not be far off from the real thing. For example: Boston Blackie goes to the grocery store and finds the clerk dead. Inspector Farraday shows up and immediately thinks Blackie is the murderer. That's how the basic plot to every Boston Blackie movie breaks down. It's even more silly when you consider that Blackie was a renowned jewel thief, not a killer, so there's no real basis for Farraday to always assume the worst about him.My gentle criticisms of the series aside, they were always pretty entertaining movies. Yes they were one of the more repetitive detective series made in the '30s and '40s. They were also lots of fun with a likable cast and typically a brisk pace. In addition to the regulars, this one also features pretty Lynn Merrick. One other criticism is that this film reuses a gag from a previous Boston Blackie film where he smears soot on his face and masquerades as a black man to slip past the dimwitted cops. Of all the tacky gags to reuse they choose that one!

Chester Morris is the glue to the entire series and here is no exception as Morris is really solid as Blackie. In this case Lynne Merrick is excellent as the devious woman who seems to be smarter than everyone including Blackie. She actually has him snowed until he catches her with her crooked boyfriend late in the film.She outsmarts the cops and even late in the film appears that she might slip out of Blackies trap. Merrick is the major add in this movie that makes it above average.The ending is humor and the acting rises above a script with some major holes in it to carry the day.

It's murder, this time, of which Boston Blackie is suspected—though, not surprisingly, Inspector Farraday never does get Blackie to the station to actually book him. Caught practically red-handed on a murder scene, Blackie has to resort to the old hiding-under-the-camera-hood gag, pretending he's the police photographer and backing slowly out of the room while the cops stand by watching. (Note to self to do some research: Did they still use those tripod cameras with the hood over the photographer's head in 1945?) The story involves a counterfeit first edition of Dickens' Pickwick Papers, with Blackie in disguise early on as an elderly whiskered book dealer. Chester Morris is his usual breezy Blackie self, with Richard Lane as Farraday as determined as ever to pin something on Blackie. Lynn Merrick and Steve Cochran seem more unstable and thus more frightening than many of Blackie's villains; they both give performances that are somewhat more serious than the good-natured bantering of Morris and Lane and the other regulars.Favorite scene: Farraday brushing off a gang of reporters by shouting, "I'm not Superman, I'm just a human being!" –and the reporters rushing out sarcastically shouting it as a scoop: "Oh-ho, he's not Superman!"

I have seen nearly every Boston Blackie film they've made and while I really like Chester Morris' title character, the films suffered much more from repetition than other B-movie detective series films. Some of this could have been because they made so many Blackie films--other than Charlie Chan, I can't think of another series of the era that had as many films. But sometimes it was just sloppy writing. While this is generally an enjoyable film, there were just too many similarities to other films--the black-face scene (which is very tacky, I know), Blackie being stuck in the chute and is trapped by the police between floors in the apartment building, and the idiot Inspector and his even more imbecilic assistant--it's all rehashed.Now how much you enjoy the film really depends on your familiarity with the series. If you are new to it, then it you'll no doubt enjoy it immensely (maybe even giving it a 7 or 8) but if you've seen many of them, there just isn't enough new and worthwhile about this pretty standard film. At least, however, the main plot idea of a forged valuable book IS new and interesting.