One Mysterious Night

The Chester Morris Boston Blackie films are always good for a laugh, and although this one is a little shorter than usual it sure ate up the 58 minutes (UK TV running time). Time was never wasted with these potboilers and the action and repartee was necessarily relentless, so making a drink might be fatal - for someone!

Blackie is accused by the police of stealing a diamond simply to get him to show up and find the real robbers for them... He seems to nose out the real culprit and his method in seconds, but as might be expected complications arise when the baddies pulling the strings don't like it. He promised to protect Dorothy Malone's brother from harm, 30 seconds later was stepping over his corpse - what poor old Dot thought of Blackie after that we'll never know. I think this was her first film, and to look at she's the real gem in this picture!

Some wonderful moments - Blackie and Runt tied upside down to a cupboard bed; some brain-dead moments - the 2 crooks hiding a yard away in plain view from 4 or 5 cops in Jumbo Madigan's small shop as tailors dummy's. They weren't Hope and Crosby, they'd just shot Jumbo and were already murderers on the lam!

This was no 7 in the 14 film series, all well worth watching - more or less!