The Chance of a Lifetime

It's another Boston Blackie movie with Chester Morris doing a good deed by getting some cons out of prison -- on parole to work at skilled trades in Lloyd Corrigan's war plant. But while Corrigan is playing Schindler, one of them, Erik Rolfe, uses the opportunity to collect the $60,000 in cash from the job that sent him upstate. His wife, Jeanne Bates, wants him to turn it over to the police, so that all of these men can go straight. However, the two crooks who were in on the job with him, want their cuts. In the struggle, Rolfe grabs one of their guns and that man is dead. The other, Douglas Fowley, flees. Morris shows up at this point and sends Rolfe to the job. He and George E. Stone are taking the corpse to his apartment, when Morris' frenemy, Inspector Richard Lane shows up, and Morris is on the hook for the murder and the money.

It's William Castle's first feature as director, and there's lots of gruesome Runyonesque situations. Morris keeps things moving along, as he did in all his movies. He had been Oscar-nominated in 1930, and spent a long stretch at MGM, but he was aging out of the juvenile roles. In this period he was under contract with Columbia, whence this movie came, and appearing in Pine-Thomas Bs over at Paramount. For my taste, he's always worth watching, but the quality of his vehicles continued to decline. Although he continued to work on the big and little screens, it was more as a major supporting player than a star, through his death in 1970 at the age of 69.

This Blackie entry is more of a flag waver than the previous five, but it's ingenious for all that. Blackie gets the conditional parole and release of chosen prisoners for them to help the War effort by labouring in one of Arthur's factories. They have to be good, but as usual there is one black sheep - who gets immediately mixed up in a shooting over a stolen USD 60,000 stash. Blackie himself takes the blame for to divert Farraday away from spoiling his pet project. And so begins another chase: Inspector Farraday and Sergeant Matthews after Boston Blackie and the Runt after Nails Blanton (the real baddie, not Blackie's man).

Jumbo Madigan plays a pivotal role in this outing so pay attention! The scenes with the two elderly and gentle female Municipal Cleaning Technicians was a farcical intrusion worthy of Monogram, but they had to get in to the police station to get back the stolen money as bait for Nails. The bit where Blackie and the Runt escape from a locked and door-less apartment leaving his 11 men and Arthur behind is delicious. The print quality is pretty awful in places, someone at the TV station in the 50's was scissor-happy.

But overall, slightly different and worthwhile.

Most all of the 1940s Columbia "Boston Blackie" films starring Chester Morris are worth watching. This entry has Blackie vouching for some convicts (remember, Blackie himself is a reformed ex-con), trying to get them early releases so they can work in factories aiding the war effort. A judge agrees, and lets them out to begin work. Obviously, things do not work out as planned...

Morris's personal charm and colorful acting style always help the film along, and his sidekick The Runt and his antagonists from the police force return from the earlier entries in the series. It's a fast moving 65 minutes, and like any of the b-movie directorial efforts of William Castle at Columbia in the 1940s, it features a number of clever visuals and plot contrivances. Also, the film is NOT a traditional murder mystery, but I don't want to give anything away, so you'll have to see it yourself. Definitely worth finding for fans of b-movie detective films. And it's always great to see Douglas Fowley as a gangster again!

"Your logic is simply hypnotic" says a "dumb copper" to Boston Blackie in The Chance of a Lifetime. I can't help but feel the logic of William Castle's directing follows in turn. Castle certainly developed his stylistic system and method of directing across his career, but this early entry characterizes his lack more than anything else (a lack he wold make up for in time). Diegetic space is constructed through shot scale cut-ins for an otherwise static camera. Later, Castle would develop his system with more mobile framing and angular contrapuntal direction (Ohmart in the Emergo scene in Haunted Hill is captured in a multiple of angular shots). In The Chance, the camera is positioned with frontality as the dominant. When groups of characters are framed, they huddle symmetrically staged in front of the camera lens creating balanced tableaux. The staging and blocking does not have the oblique quality prominent in later Castle films. The story itself involves Blackie's proposed plan to the state's Governor to parole ex-cons in order to aid in munitions manufacturing for the war. Recidivism and risk assessment are the name of the game as Blackie gets tangled up in the loose ends of an old crime of one of the paroled cons. There is good suspense and characterization but at times the acting is stilted while the dialogue is a little on-the-nose. As is characteristic of Castle "B" status films, plot contrivances abound. An earlier reviewer seemed to express that the contrivances are an asset or perhaps aid, while I cannot agree. The "cigarette gag" and "secret panel" gag have the lameness that makes narrative progress move forward with an awkward gait. The buffoonery of the police was an issue with the critics upon release as far as it concerns the status quo. For me, the portrayal of the police as stooges gets tired and leads to the story dragging somewhat (others may disagree). The ending involves confessions under extreme duress and although neat, are also an element of convenience at service for the production and not the audience. The flaws in directing would be repeated several times by Castle as he worked slowly to develop a more sound stylistic system.

This time, "Boston" (Chester Morris) comes up with a proposal to the Governor that would allow some trusted prisoners to come and work in a factory to assist with the war effort. He agrees that they can live at his apartment but before long is embroiled in a plan to prove that "Dooley" (Erik Rolf) was set up for a murder he didn't commit. Unusually, "Insp. Faraday" (Richard Lane) is in on the plot to use "Blackie" as bait for the real criminal - well, him and $60,000 - and using some sleight of hand and his gang of well-meaning convicts lays a trap for... This doesn't hang about, is tightly cast with series regulars and with a more solid story than many of the other outings for an on form Morris, it passes an hour with a few red herrings and a precarious window-dangled confession at the end.