Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941)

Touches You

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Confessions Of Boston Blackie" is listed as 65 minutes long but seems much longer. I think that is because it continually breaks the Law of Outlandish Improbabilities too often, resulting in a movie that is lame and tedious. The main flaw is that it tries (unsuccessfully) to combine mystery with humor, a trait common to pre-war mystery movies, but here the attempt is an absolute flop. Compounding the problem is the fact that the murderer is known as soon as the murder is committed, which eliminates any mystery the picture could claim.The result is a potboiler which will keep you looking at your watch, waiting for the 65 minutes to expire. Not worth rehashing the plot, and the law mentioned above is invoked often and stretches the viewers patience and credibility boundaries.In truth, much of the subject matter, as well as the styles and customs - not to mention much of the dialogue - is embedded in the 1940's. This is ordinarily not a problem, but a great deal of the humor is also from the 40's, much of which falls flat and slows the proceedings down. The result is an unsatisfactory mystery/comedy which may not have been considered good when it first came out.

Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941) *** (out of 4) Second film in the series has the ex-thief (Chester Morris) trying to track down some murderers who are also in the fake sculpture business. This here was directed by Edward Dmytryk and is a highly entertaining little gem. Morris is a lot better this time out and the screenplay gives him much better lines and a much better mystery. The film has some wonderful supporting players, all of which add plenty of laughs. Richard Lane returns as the Inspector and has great chemistry with Morris.

Love these low budget films that were produced during the 1940's and by a great producer, Edward Dmytryk who created many of these Boston Blackie films. Chester Morris,(Boston Blackie) gets himself involved with Harriet Hillard, (Diane Parrish) who has put up a valuable statue for an art auction which is run by a crooked organization of hoods who copy great treasures of art and sell the phony reproductions. There is a man who gets murdered and his body is hidden in a statue with a secret door on the back. Richard Lane, (Inspector Farraday) is always after Boston Blackie for stealing a pearl and also gets himself running around in circles trying to find something to arrest Boston Blackie and his sidekick George E. Stone, (The Runt). In this film, Harriet Hillard is the wife of Ozzie Nelson who made famous their favorite TV Show.

This time Blackie is suspected of being the murderer of an art dealer at an auction attended by Inspector Farraday. Blackie has to spend the rest of the movie exonerating himself of the crime and discovering what happened to the missing body of the art dealer.Female interest is provided by HARRIET HILLIARD, wife of "Ozzie" Nelson(the bandleader), who was making a few rather unimpressive appearances in films around this time. She's interested in purchasing a statue of Julius Caesar. Blackie is up to his same old shenanigans in throwing Farraday off his trail and proving that he's not guilty of a murder he never committed.Interesting plot has to do with the missing body of the dead man and how it was accomplished with a phony statue. The story follows the usual Boston Blackie formula and this one is not quite on the same level with the first Blackie film. Still, for detective fans, it manages to move briskly within its short running time.