Strictly average movie

recommended

A Masterpiece!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

***SPOILERS*** The last of the Boston Blackie series of films has Blackie get involved in a diamond smuggling ring in New York's, not Boston, Chinatown. That's when Blackie and his sidekick The Runt were implicated in the murder of Chinese laundromat owner Charlie Lu who was found murdered with Blackie's laundry slip found nearby by the police.Blackie in trying to prove his innocence even though there was not enough evidence to arrest him takes it on himself to go undercover in Chinatown with a flimsy Halloween mask, of what looked like Doctor Fu Man Chu,that no one suspects he's wearing as a disguise. It doesn't take long for Blackie and The Runt to find out that Charlie Lu's laundromat was being used as a place to smuggle stolen diamonds with poor Charlie totally unaware of it. It's when Charlie found out what was going on in his place of business it ended up costing him his life. The film "Boston Blackie's Chinese venture" also cost the life of the Boston Blackie series in that it just about put the final nine on its coffin in just how bad brainless as well as uninteresting the film was! Chester Morris who plays Boston Blackie who's seen better days and was in better movies finally called it quits after he made the film. You can see Morris just about had it with playing Boston Blackie in his nonchalant acting in the film and even his beautiful women co stars Maylia as Charlie Lu's niece Mei Ling and gorgeous redhead Joan Woodbury as Red couldn't spice things up for him. He looked totally bored in his role, even with a mask on, and seemed to want to just get out of it as soon as possible and go back to better things in life.***SPOILERS*** The ridicules ending was a real downer in Blackie having an entire Chinese tea store, obviously serving members of the Tea Party, have all its boxes of tea dump out to find the hidden diamonds that were being smuggled there through Charlie Lu's laundromat. Which all ended up making a total mess of both the store as well as what was still left, for those of us watching, of the movie.

"Boston Blackie's Chinese Venture" is the last in the Boston Blackie series, filmed in 1949. Thanks to Blackie, Chester Morris had to return to the theater, as he was quoted as saying, "After ... these films, a producer wouldn't put me in an 'A' movie even if I paid for the privilege." Without the good-looking, amusing Morris as Blackie, the series would not have worked as well as it did. The stories were usually very formulaic, and you really had to love the Runt in order for him not to become annoying. (The Runt here is Sid Tomack and not George E. Stone.) This story is actually kind of interesting - Blackie gets involved with a diamond smuggling ring in Chinatown after the owner of a laundry is found dead right after Blackie dropped off his laundry! Of course, as usual, he has to clear his name or be arrested by Inspector Farraday.The fun part about this film is the underground Chinese tours for tourists showing gambling, dancing slave girls, etc. - all fake, with the performers dropping their acts as soon as the tour guide moves on.Sorry to see Blackie go, but it became a TV show in the '50s starring Kent Taylor, a very different type from the amiable Morris.

For the Boston Blackie series finale once again Blackie and the Runt are in wrong place, wrong time. They can't even check on the laundry without getting mixed up in some kind of escapade where fatalities occur. Chester Morris and Sid Tomack who plays the Runt in the farewell film leave a Chinese laundry where the laundryman is later murdered. Tomack is a good comic actor who occasionally essayed serious parts, most notably in the Humphrey Bogart classic Knock On Any Door. But he doesn't have that runt like quality that George E. Stone did.A little investigation and Blackie discovers a gem smuggling operation that is worked out of a tea shop owned by Philip Ahn with a Chinatown tour bus used as the shuttle. As usual while avoiding the ever suspicious Inspector Richard Lane and his faithful stooge Frank Sully, Blackie gets the goods.This was not a bad film, but the series was clearly getting stale. How many variations of Blackie and the Runt caught up in a situation not of their own making and be accused of homicide and him clearing himself can there be? Blackie would later appear on television briefly with Kent Taylor starring.Anyway Boston Blackie had a good run while it lasted.

As usual, Blackie and Runt (oddly, NOT played by George E. Stone in this film) are at the wrong place at the wrong time and are accused of murder. However, as the film progressed, it was obvious that some deeper conspiracy was afoot. Stupidly, this conspiracy became unbelievably complicated--far more than common sense would dictate and you're left wondering why the thieves went to so much trouble. After all, after stealing diamonds and re-cutting them, why have all the complicated business involving the tour guide, the theater and the lady?! Also, the stunt doubles towards the end for the fight scene were just awful--making it pretty obvious that they were NOT the star fighting with a criminal.While this movie is far from great, considering that it is much more original than many of the previous films in the series, it's a pretty good movie. Up until then, Chester Morris had played the title character in more than a dozen films in less than a decade and the scripts had become very repetitive and formulaic. Unfortunately, it still has Inspector Farraday AGAIN blaming Blackie for a crime--even though Blackie ALWAYS finds the real criminals by the end of EVERY film. But, apart from that, the film's change in locale (to Chinatown) is a welcome relief--thank goodness for SOME originality! What you think about this and other Blackie films probably does depend on how many you've seen. If you've only seen a few, this one is probably one of the lesser efforts but after seeing more than a couple, this is quite different.By the way, in a very small scene you have a police lab scientist talking to Farraday about an analysis he did on a package of tea leaves. This lab man was very funny--too bad he was only briefly in the film, as he was sarcastic and offered a nice respite from the usual material.