Diagonaldi Very well executed

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

GManfred "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.

blanche-2 Boston Blackie is in top form in "Confessions of Boston Blackie," a 1941 entry into the popular series that stars Chester Morris, George E. Stone, Richard Lane, Charles Winninger and Harriet Hilliard (aka Harriet Nelson). Nelson plays Diane Parrish, who has given the wrong people an enormous statue to auction, not knowing that they copy the piece and auction the fake instead. At the auction, she realizes it's not the original statue, and chaos reigns, during which a man is killed - and of course Blackie (Morris) who had pulled his gun, is accused. The statue has a piece that comes off in the back, and it's used to hide the dead body. Of course Blackie's wealthy friend Lloyd Corrigan (Winninger) buys the fake one for $200.This film is grand fun, with Faraday (Lane) as bumbling as ever, Blackie getting away from him in no time. George E. Stone is funny as the runt, Blackie's sidekick. Playing Blackie himself, Chester Morris is handsome, demonstrating the character's good humor and relaxed manner with his great line deliveries. There's a subplot here of an old flame of Blackie's showing up and trying to blackmail him. But we all know that Blackie gets around."Confessions of Boston Blackie," directed by Edward Dmytryk, is zany and keeps you hopping.

tedg After a period of amazing experimentation in the 30s, the detective genre settled into a few tracks. One of these consisted of series films with previously well known characters, usually from radio. Some actually pretended to have a mystery, while others like this did not. The main appeal was supposed to be in the characters and their traits. Boston Blackie's character is one of the more endearing, which allowed the extremely low budget production room to continue.Blackie is a successful thief, one of those charming, superclever types that appeared in the 20s and early 30s. Blackie stole because the rich deserved it, pure and simple, not out of selfish greed, and in fact his story always mentions how he gave the proceeds to the starving. He was one of the inventions we created during the last period where the difference in the wealthy and poor was immense.By this time (1941) he had been reinvented. Now he was a retired thief, with his cleverness turned to solving crimes the police were too dumb to understand. Along the way, the police (always the same guy) would suspect Blackie of the crime. So in addition to outwitting the criminals — which was ordinary in such movies — he had to more severely and embarrassingly outwit the police. That's the added piece here.His two sidekicks are runt, a Runyon-esquire character, and Arthur, a rich but clueless playboy. Arthur is important because he anchors the political reinvention handily. He always has enough money which is freely available for Blackie's escapades.I've only seen a couple of these, but this has something a bit extraordinary. Quite independent of any story element or need, we have a thread inserted. One of Blackie's affairs has resurfaced, a tall tough redheaded moll, who claims to be married to him and wants money... "or else."Its a strange episode, obviously inserted to tell us something about Blackie that is expected to build his appeal and thus the franchise. He's a wisecracking guy clever guy who (almost) never resorts to violence. He's slick and chatty. But we get the idea here that in the bedroom he can master this wild amazon. Because in the US, we were deep in the stupid prurient code, there had to be this amazingly indirect way of telling us this.I suppose its important, and that it worked. Blackie lasted for 15 films.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Neil Doyle 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.