Good movie but grossly overrated

Expected more

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

There are a ton of books pulled off the shelves of used book stores and thrift shops to be used as props in this intellectual entry of the "Boston Blackie" series. It's all about the theft of a first edition of Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers" and a murder that follows. Blackie's in disguise for a great auction sequence, one of the best, along with 1941's "All Through the Night" and Hitchcock's "North by Northwest". Blackie is in cahoots with Richard Lane's inspector, losing the buffoonish quality of earlier episodes when they were more foes. George E. Stone and Lloyd Corrigan are once again featured, with Lynn Merrick an excellent femme fatale. Some clever use of shadows and very tight editing make this one of the better later entries in the series. This entry doesn't throw its intelligence in the viewer's face, but grabs them, pulls them in like a great novel, and keeps them involved. Is it any wonder that later screenwriters, directors and technicians point to the B films of the 1940's as to why they got into the film industry?

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!

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.