Dark Alibi (1946)

Usually films with this much activity are cluttered and over- plotted, but it all works reasonably well in "Dark Alibi". It needed padding but rather than slow it down, the producers wisely just kept adding filler bits, so there is a lot going on. The film's basic frame-up concept is good. The police, warden, prosecutor are blended and balanced expertly by the director to advance the plot.Teala Loring is attractive and a good actress, well suited for this b-movie. The old gent who portrays her father does a good job, too. I can live without the Birmingham and Benjamin corny old vaudeville bit but it was popular in the 1940's era and it is a better filler for padding purposes than most routines (filler was probably necessary due to Toler's health). Benson Fong is inconsequential, he just moves along and tries to keep up with the pace. Janet Shaw delivers one of her insouciant tough girl performances that always keep her watchable in films.Sidney Toler gets the job done but he really looks ill at times. He manages valiantly to stay active enough to stride across a room now and then, but he is sitting down in some scenes, obviously for health reasons.Good work by the director, good red herrings, and lots of somewhat overloaded activity provide us with an OK low budget b-movie in "Dark Alibi".

I own 20 Charlie Chan movies and have watched more than that, and this is the absolute worst one I've ever seen. With about 5 or 10 minutes of actual plot, the bulk of the movie is mostly talk talk talk talk about nothing at all, several extremely annoying "comedy" sequences between Mantan Moreland and his vaudeville partner Ben Carter, and, most ridiculous of all, "assistants" Mantan Moreland and Benson Fong finding every possible way to ignore Chan's instructions, get in the way, and generally act stupid. Evidently Monogram decided to forget about producing an actual whodunit and instead make a sort of Three Stooges comedy (almost everything the Three Stooges did was better). POSSIBLE SPOILER -- I enjoy humor in whodunits, but this isn't a whodunit (the entire plot consists of Chan asking a lab to experiment with fingerprints), just a series of jokes padded with boring filler. Awful.

This is my twelfth review of a Charlie Chan movie in series chronological order on these consecutive days. In this one, a man who's been out of prison for twenty years is suddenly arrested for a recent robbery at a bank he claims he's never set foot in. His daughter and lawyer are on the verge of giving up until Charlie overhears and offers his services...Directed by Phil Karlson who had previously helmed The Shanghai Cobra, he once again provides an exciting beginning and ending sequence for a Chan entry. While I admit to not understanding everything that is going on concerning the case, it was still interesting to hear Charlie's analysis, as always. And despite the now-not-very-acceptable stereotype of a scared black man with bulging eyes in these modern times, Mantan Moreland is still funny to me when he does what he does here. His comedy is perfectly aided, once again, by Benson Fong as "No. 3 Son" Tommy, and Ben Carter in a reprise of his and Mantan's "interrupted talk" from The Scarlet Clue. Even Charlie joins in this routine at the end. Incidentally, Carter would pass away not long after appearing here. Good atmospheric touches throughout. So on that note, I recommend Dark Alibi. P.S. Joyce Compton, who's Emily Evans here, was a native of Lexington, Ky. where I lived as a child from 1974-75 during which my youngest sister was born. Ray Walker, who's Danvers here, was another character actor who appeared in my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-as Joe, a luggage handler who gives the adult George Bailey his suitcase with his name on it as we see James Stewart as the lead character for the first time. Also, on a personal note, I started watching these Monogram Chan movies (usually starring Roland Winters) on my local station here in Baton Rouge on Channel 2, WBRZ-TV, in the late '70s during the late night lineup of movies on Saturday morning on "Charlie Chan Cinema". The wraparound open and closing sequence had someone banging a gong before we dolly to a silhouette of a Chinese man speaking in Pidgin English introducing the movie and mentioning the next week's title, respectively, while the country's type of music played in the background. Actually, since we only see his shadow, I don't know if he was actually Asian or some other race but that was my memory of that sequence...

if you miss this one. It was evident this series was coming to an end (as was Toler's life) in this unrealistic mystery that was held aloft by gimmicks.The comedy of Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) was the only bright spot which carried this movie through to it's conclusion.Although a credible actor,Benson Fong playing Tommy Chan, is just plain flat. Tommy and Birmingham seem to have a free reign in what appears to be a maximum security prison.Much ado here about nothing.