binapiraeus Well, finally the writers of the 'Boston Blackie' crime adventures that entertained the audience so fabulously for a whole decade DID seem to run out of new ideas; or maybe this kind of crime movie just wasn't 'fashionable' anymore? The VERY long-running 'Charlie Chan' movie series ended the same year...Of course, there is some solid suspense and quite a few good jokes in this last case of Blackie's (like when Sergeant Matthews 'keeps an eye' on Blackie walking up and down in his apartment all night - while it's really a cardboard figure tied to a toy train moving around!), and we get a glimpse of New York's Chinatown, where some very shady business is being done - but mostly by white people! It's not one of the best entries in the series, it's REALLY a swan song - but it's still better than many other 'average' crime movies.George E. Stone, who had played the 'Runt' in almost all of the movies, is already missing here - and now it's curtains for the series as a whole. One of the most entertaining, inventive and funny crime movie series of all times, with one of the BEST protagonists: Chester Morris, alias Boston Blackie...

sol ***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.

bkoganbing 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.

csteidler The final chapter in the Boston Blackie saga starts off briskly and without surprises: Blackie drops off his laundry just moments before the laundry proprietor is discovered murdered; Inspector Farraday arrives on the scene to investigate and quickly deduces that Blackie is involved; Blackie chuckles along with Farraday but realizes he is going to have to find the real killer to clear himself. –That's all in the first five minutes, of course. The rest of the action includes stolen jewels, phony Chinatown underworld tours, and a couple of large piles of tea. It's all quite enjoyable…not the best in the series, but an adequate if unspectacular finale.Chester Morris is as steady as ever as Blackie--smart, smooth and snappy. Richard Lane's Inspector Farraday is still (Wile E. Coyote-like) confident in the face of all previous experience that he will sooner or later make something stick to Blackie. The only real sign that the series was ending was the absence of George E. Stone as the Runt; Sid Tomack is passable in the role but not really a replacement. The film's most shocking moment comes when Frank Sully's Detective Matthews has perhaps his first bright idea in fourteen films—noting that the gunshots just heard from inside the movie theater could not have been part of the movie playing, because it's a movie about Robin Hood! (And here he points out the movie poster for The Prince of Thieves; also coming soon to that theater, I noticed, was The Mating of Millie—nice advertising for a couple of 1949 Columbia features that I suppose I will have to put on my long list….)One great moment: The Chinese "gamblers" dropping their act and resuming their real game when the door closes on the peeking tourists—"All right, fellas," one says, "let's pick up the bridge game where we left off."It would have been a huge surprise if Blackie and the Runt had not disguised themselves as Chinese in at least one scene….Overall, it's a fair mystery with a few unique moments: a solid finish to the series.