Poor Frank Sully. With this film, he's been crowned the dumbest cop I've ever seen on the screen. That includes Fred Kelsey and Donald MacBride, who seemed to be in a race to collect the largest number of dumb cop roles. Having joined half way through the Boston Blackie series, he somehow kept his job, even in the ones where supervisor Richard Lane proved to be smart while Sully remained idiotic. Three films away from concluding, this series just seems to run out of steam then suddenly pick back up. That inconsistency is a frustrating detail, considering how well it started.
Somehow, Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) has gotten a magic act together, and as this film begins, is performing it in a woman's prison. Inmate Constance Dowling manages to escape, makes her way to confront old lover Warren Ashe, setting Blackie up for abating and abetting her, and this leads into an investigation as to what really went down. With the aide of Ashe's new assistant (Trudy Marshall), Blackie goes out of his way to explore the truth. This gets to be too much, too fast, removing all of the elements which made the first films so much fun. Morris tries to put in the old magic (particularly when he steps into Ashe's turban and goatee), but is defeated by the juvenile script.
Somehow, Boston Blackie (Chester Morris) has gotten a magic act together, and as this film begins, is performing it in a woman's prison. Inmate Constance Dowling manages to escape, makes her way to confront old lover Warren Ashe, setting Blackie up for abating and abetting her, and this leads into an investigation as to what really went down. With the aide of Ashe's new assistant (Trudy Marshall), Blackie goes out of his way to explore the truth. This gets to be too much, too fast, removing all of the elements which made the first films so much fun. Morris tries to put in the old magic (particularly when he steps into Ashe's turban and goatee), but is defeated by the juvenile script.