Dark Alibi

A bank is robbed, and a guard is shot to death. Clues lead the police to the Foss Family Hotel where we meet a varied group of unsavory suspects.

Thomas Harley, who resides at the hotel along with his beautiful daughter June, is the one that the police are after-- it was his fingerprints left on the safe that led the police to the hotel.

He claims that he was locked up in a theatrical warehouse, but he has no witnesses. Even more suspicious is his story that he had received a letter from a man he hadn't seen for many years, asking him to a meeting at the warehouse; but the prosecutor can prove that the man had been dead for eight years.

Chan thinks the set-up is much too pat, and he doesn't give up on Mr. Harley when Harley's daughter June makes an appeal to him to help free her innocent dad. But how can he account for those fingerprints?

Although the premise was way far-fetched Dark Alibi is nicely done and one of the better Charlie Chan features coming from Monogram. Sidney Toler as Chan takes on a case where time is essential, the life of Edward Earle who was convicted for a robbery/homicide is at stake, he's scheduled to go to the chair in nine days.

Ironically technology has caught up to the events of this film. The idea of forging fingerprints and leaving them at the scene of a crime as a false clue is not anything startling today. In fact it's fairly simple if you want to take the time and trouble to do same. Still in 1946 I'm sure it was a shock to many.

Poor Earle in order to be freed has to find out who put him in the jackpot. And it doesn't take long for Charlie to be convinced of his innocence when on the way to state prison someone takes some sniper shots at him. That by the way was the weakness of the film. No reason to shoot at him yet as he wasn't on to anything yet.

There are more than one individual involved in this, in fact it's quite a list of conspirators. And in fact there is one real big connection to the state prison where Earle is counting down his last hours.

Ben Carter plays one of the prisoners and an old friend of Mantan Moreland playing the Chan family chauffeur Birmingham. These two had a nice comic act before going into films involving them in a conversation where they constantly interrupt each other's words. They know what they're talking about, but poor Tommy Chan played by Benson Fong is standing there without a clue. Wonderful comic timing all around.

Good Charlie Chan film and a masterpiece coming from Monogram.

Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is asked to prove the innocence of a man already convicted of murder and scheduled to be executed. So Charlie tries to get to the bottom of how the man's fingerprints could have been at the scene of the crime if he was innocent. He's got help from incompetent son Tommy (Benson Fong) and trite comic relief Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland). There's a moronic scene where Tommy and Birmingham wander around a prison with no guards even noticing. It's a typically cheap Monogram movie with shoddy writing. Moreland's old vaudeville partner Ben Carter returns for the second time in the series to do one of their old vaudeville routines. It's amusing but essentially the same bit they did the last time. Janet Shaw, Joyce Compton, Teala Loring and Chan regulars Milton Parsons and John Eldredge also appear.

The script is particularly weak. One of the biggest flaws in the Monogram series versus the Fox one is that the scripts are so bad. Often Sidney Toler seems to be padding his lines in an effort to make the scene work. In the older series, particularly throughout the Warner Oland years, Charlie seemed wise beyond his years. In the Monogram films he just seems smug. Don't even get me started on the lack of good aphorisms that Charlie Chan is known for. Here he spouts nonsense about "if tooth is missing, gap will tell us much" or some such baloney.

If you've seen some of the Monogram Chans and liked them, you will probably enjoy this more than I did. If you're new to Charlie Chan movies, do yourself a favor and start with the Fox films. Don't let your first Chan film be from Monogram or you might never want to try another.

Most of the movies in the Charlie Chan series were bona-fide mysteries that were short on plot credulity and laced with a measure of comic relief throughout. "Dark Alibi" falls in line with this tried and true formula, but somebody dumped in an overload of comedy and nearly spoiled the whole picture. There are a lot of suspects to choose from in the clever plot in which we have to figure out who is the bank robber/murderer who masterminded the crime and used someone else's fingerprints to frame an innocent man. Not bad, huh? Even though the story is a little hard to swallow it gets points for creativity. However...

No question Mantan Moreland is a funny guy and gets a lot of mileage here with his pop-eyed, 'feets-do-your-duty' scared stiff routine. He is almost hung out to dry with it, and coupled with some misguided scenes with Benson Fong as two incompetents, it is all too much. The picture could have been 15 minutes shorter without some of the excruciating hi-jinks involving these two. The cast was a good one, production values were very good and the film did not betray any trace of a Poverty Row production. Recommended for Charlie Chan fans and for those who enjoy a mystery in which the murderer is very tough to spot (and don't worry too much about the details).

A well done opening scene features a bank break-in and a murdered guard. A suspect is quickly arrested because his fingerprints are found at the scene. Though the suspect's daughter insists he is innocent, he is quickly convicted and the case seems hopeless--until Charlie Chan agrees to investigate, even though the execution is only nine days off.

Mantan Moreland and Benson Fong--as chauffeur Birmingham Brown and number three son Tommy Chan--assist Pop Chan as usual. Sidney Toler drops wisecracks at their expense, also as usual:

Toler: "You two not afraid?" Fong: "Afraid of what, Pop?" Toler: "That you sit down so often you get concussion of brain."

There's plenty of plot, some of it involving the real murderers' ingenious method of planting fake fingerprints. Chan's investigation roams from the rooming house where his client lives to the local prison (where Birmingham and Tommy lock themselves into a cell with gleeful convict Tim Ryan).

It's really not particularly exciting or memorable, but it's easy to watch and doesn't take itself too seriously.

Chan's best line is probably when he is grilling rooming house residents about their pasts: "Skeletons in closets always speak loudest to police."