As Good As It Gets

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

***SPOILERS*** Hair or feathered brained whodunit where a missing blackbird or raven is the main witness to a murder that the independent candidate running for mayor John M. Rhodes, Gene Lockhart, has been accused of. It's up to private dick D.I Trees, Jerome Cowan, or the California Redwood Family to save Rhodes' political career as well as neck in tracking down the missing bird. That's after the bird's owner Fred Molner was found murdered in his apartment by Trees with his assistant Ray Hickey knocked out cold in the kitchen. There's also the fact that $30,000.00 in cash in found in a cigar box that Molner has collect from his clients as a bookie that he was holding back on them! Could one of them have murdered him but was unable to find the cash before Trees came on the scene? Long winded for a short-55 minutes- movie we have a number of clues to not only Molar's murder but who's behind the scenes in trying to sabotage Rhodes run for major. It was Molner who was at first blackmailing Rhodes in threatening to reveal that his bride to be's brother was a jail-bird in San Quentin instead of being a door to door salesman of totalities for the last three years. And the fact that Rhodes admittedly being at the scene of the murder didn't help his case either!****SPOILERS****It's at the end that the truth is finally found out to who killed Molner to anyone, on the screen or watching the movie, who's still interested which is reviled by the mysterious black bird who in fact wasn't even a witness to the murder in the first place! The bird was just programmed to blurt out the killer's name and what he did before he did it which would make it totally inadmissible in any court of law in the US or anywhere else on earth! As for the bird itself were soon to find out that it doesn't talk at all with what turned out to be ventriloquist Hickey doing all the talking for it!

Find the crow, and you find the blackmailer. That's basically what portly mayor Gene Lockhart tells private investigator Jerome Cowan. Poor Cowan only got the job because he's the least known private detective in the city, and that joke sets them theme for the style of this tongue-in-cheek murder mystery where all sorts of shady characters come in and out, all looking for the mysterious black bird that holds the secret, not the stuff that dreams are made of. Cowan and secretary Faye Emerson, down to no cases, are thrilled for just one chance, especially since solving this crime could open all sorts of doors. It's an entertaining, extremely fast moving Warner Brothers second feature with witty lines, a few red herrings and just an all round fun atmosphere that proved in movies, sometimes less was more.Lockhart made a career out of playing pompous asses, and obviously knowing that his look archetyped this character, played them to the hilt. Here, he's not quite as pompous, although his initial speech on the radio makes him appear that way. He knows he's in over his head, and if he has any chance of winning re-election, that darn crow must be found. The presence of Bradley Page (one of the screen's most darkest of shady villains) gives an obvious suspect to the dirty goings on, but in only 55 minutes, a ton of other characters are introduced as possibilities. The whereabouts of the actual crow (who ironically sounds like a parrot) is amusing as well. Fun, quick and done, you may not find the revelation of the blackmailer a big surprise, but you'll have a fun time getting there.

Like the Maltese Falcon, Warner Brothers "B" detective thriller Find The Blackmailer involves a search for a black bird. Here the resemblance ends. In this case the black bird, rather than a jewel-encrusted statuette, is absurdly a talking crow, which can put the finger on the detective's client for a murder. Honestly! Not as bad as it sounds, but not Golden Era Hollywood at its best either.The principle attractions of this picture are the unusual and charming casting of Jerome Cowan in the lead role as the tough if somewhat bumbling detective and some stylish noir cinematography by James Van Trees. Cowan is ably supported by the ever reliable Gene Lockhart as his blackmailed politician client, Margorie Hoshelle as his breezy, underpaid secretary, and second-billed Faye Emerson as a nasty femme fa-tale. The script is muddled, ridiculous, and padded out with a lot of meandering, unnecessary action. It looks as if director D. Ross Lederman was struggling to squeeze out the required 55-minute running time. If his picture had been tightly edited, it could have easily run only 40 minutes without losing anything. Dialog is cliché-ridden, but fun. Just about every wise-crack and every colorful slang term from every detective, mystery, cops-and-robbers picture from the previous decade as been gathered for recycling in Find The Blackmailer. Surly this picture was meant to be a spoof. Big hint -- the detective's name is Trees, same as the cinematographer. Or does that just mean they were making up the script as they went along? This suspicion will creep in from time to time as you watch the strange proceedings. Never mind, just relax and enjoy. You can't be expected to figure it out if it doesn't make sense. And it most assuredly does not. Cowan's character is more humorous that tough. Cowan didn't have a muscle in his body, but he still manages to get tough when needed by keeping his hand on the .32 automatic in his coat pocket. But mostly he just cracks wise and grins through his trademark pencil-line mustache.But not so bad for all that. As yours truly has stated elsewhere about other, better second features, the big studios of Old Hollywood could turn out good-looking, entertaining pictures while only half-way trying. In Find The Blackmailer it looks as if they didn't try much at all, yet it still turned out a watchable, even enjoyable picture -- if you're in the right mood.

Find the Blackmailer (1943) ** 1/2 (out of 4) "B" mystery from Warner has Detective Trees (Jerome Cowan) being hired by John Rhodes (Gene Lockhart), a man getting ready to run for Mayor but he finds himself being blackmailed. It turns out that Rhodes threatened to kill his blackmailer and it was overhead by a crow (!?!) who might be evidence if the man ends up being killed. So the detective must now try to track down not only the crow but soon others are getting in on the mystery. The story to this short never makes any sense but I guess one should expect that since the entire thing is solved in a very short 55-minutes. Most of these "B" mysteries were very short in regards to running time but this one here can't even crack the hour mark but this here is probably a good thing since the story doesn't make much sense and I'm sure had it gone on any longer then it really would have lost its entertainment value. I think for the most part this is a pleasant enough of a film so fans of the genre will at least be caught up in the rather bizarre story. There are so many obvious questions that will pop up in your head including how much evidence any court would take from the eyewitness being a talking crow. I mean, do you really think this talking bird would get someone convicted? Even sillier is how everyone appears to be coming up with their own ideas on who the killer is and what motive he/she must have. For the most part Cowan does a nice job in the lead as he's dorky enough to where you can believe he's this detective that no one wants and the actor also has some nice comic timing that comes in handy. Lockhart is terrific as usual and we get a nice performance from Faye Emerson playing one of the bad guys. The entire detective/bird thing will obviously have film buffs thinking of THE MALTESE FALCON and sure enough Cowan had a brief part in that Bogart classic. He must have payed close attention on how to play a detective and while the end results are far from a classic, this movie at least will keep you entertained if you have an hour to kill.