Highly Overrated But Still Good

Admirable film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Inane Boston Blackie caper with Chester Morris in the title role.An old guy is released from prison after spending years there for a jewelry heist. Met by his daughter, he knows he has to leave town before the mob gets to him. Of course, he catches a fatal bullet and you never see the daughter again in the film.Blackie along with his wily assistant get involved in all this and each time the latter is supposed to be married, something invariably comes up which delays the ceremony.The whole story is contrived with everyone riding around in cars in chase of each other.The one redeeming feature of the film is at the end when the often-to-be bride is surprised by the police and it is revealed what she really is.

There's Boston Blackie again getting mixed up with other people's diamonds: an old pal from jail days, who's just been released himself, asks him to collect the very valuable diamonds he'd stolen and hidden in order to secure his daughter's future. But, of course, there are other crooks as well who want to get their hands on the jewels - and so, there are the familiar chases again, Blackie's caught once more by Inspector Faraday in front of an open safe; arrests, escapes, murders... And which day out of all does he (or rather, the gang that tries to track him and the diamonds down) pick for all those asphalt jungle adventures? His friend's, the Runt's wedding day! So you can just guess how many times the ceremony is delayed... until a VERY surprising ending! Another very entertaining - and VERY inventive on the part of the authors! - Boston Blackie tale, with Chester Morris in GREAT shape: this time he even does a short black face comedy to get into the top gangster's house! And all this hokum mixes surprisingly well with some 'tougher' crime movie moments; a great treat not only for 'Boston Blackie' addicts!

"After Midnight with Boston Blackie" is another fun entry into the Boston Blackie series, starring Chester Morris and George E. Stone. An old man, Diamond Ed Barnaby (Walter Baldwin) is freed from prison and intends to give some stolen diamonds to his daughter (Betty Barnaby). However, his old gang wants them. His troubled daughter appeals to involved with the police and proves himself smarter. Meanwhile, The Runt's marriage to one Dixie Rose Blossom (Jan Buckingham) keeps being delayed, and friend Arthur Manleder (Lloyd Corrigan) has to keep the intended entertained, since the wedding is taking place at his apartment.These Blackie films follow the same formula over and over - the dumb Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane) and the clever Blackie interfering with a police case - which is a good thing because without Blackie, the case would never be solved.Nevertheless, these films always manage to be entertaining, thanks in large art to Chester Morris and George E. Stone. Morris has a lot of charm and a lighthearted attitude as Blackie. He manages to keep some of these tired plots going. Hard to believe that the woman who played the sweet daughter Betty is the same woman who played the hard-boiled femme fatale in Detour.

Turner Classic Movies just recently showed most of the Boston Blackie films starring Chester Morris and while they are pretty good B-detective films, they are also very, very formulaic--even for the genre. I practically saw all of these movies and the same stupid inspector and his subhuman sidekick are accusing Blackie of committing the crimes in question. And, each time, Bost Blackie solves the crime for them--making their idiocy apparent again and again and again. You'd think that these bumblers would be fired and that any cop with a functioning cortex would realize the best thing to do it just sit back and let Blackie solve the crime! Plus, in the process, the Inspector almost always gets himself captured or is tricked by Blackie. At first, this is all pretty funny, but by the time this film came out, the formula was wearing a bit thin. They could have easily kept most of the formula but also had the cops not always been so stupid--this would have greatly improved the films.This film isn't much different from the rest--having a pretty standard plot involving stolen diamonds and a vicious gang who will stop at nothing to get them. Of course, as usual Blackie is blamed by the moronic cops for everything and as usual, Blackie is able to easily outwit them. Frankly, if Blackie had played peek-a-boo or "got your nose" with these policemen, they probably would have been surprised again and again--they were just THAT stupid. The only plus is that at the end, the stupid Sergeant did a much better job than usual assisting Blackie.There was one small scene, by the way, that truly amazed me. Blackie and Runt were in a cab being followed by the police in another cab. Blackie told the cabbie to pull over. Then, after doing this he told the guy to "back up into the cab behind us"...and the guy DID!!! I'd love to find a cabbie that compliant. I might tell him to give me all his cash, then get out of the cab and drop his pants and sing show tunes!