Just perfect...

Fresh and Exciting

Admirable film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Review - Dark Alibi, Released 5-25-46 This Monogram Charlie Chan movie was maybe the last in the series where Sidney Toler was on camera frequently, i.e. most of the scenes, after the initial setup murder-robbery. Considering the actor was 73 years old at the release date, and lived less than a year afterward, kudos should be given just for showing up at the studio. As a fan of the entire Warner Oland-Sidney Toler series, there was not a dissatisfying movie of the entire lot; buy the premise, buy the program. The story centers on the framing of certain convicts' fingerprints appearing at the scenes of bank robberies and at least one murder to start our movie. The guilty party is sentenced for execution, convicted of the murder of a bank guard and the robbery of a bank vault. It is for Charlie Chan to work the odds of determining the real perpetrators, bring them to justice while freeing the doomed man framed for the crime. The warden of the prison asks Charlie how is it possible to exonerate the condemned man. Charlie's reply, the man dies without his efforts to save him. Questioning each and every person possibly involved leads to an entertaining hour of tracking the guilty parties, and there are a few, this is not isolated to one killer and robber. Each person living at a hotel has a story connected in some way to the resident innocent victim. Charlie works the crowd of suspects knowing the real guilt falls in part upon the hotel residents and a third person located in the prison, but not a convict. Charlie has multiple scenes among the hotel, the prison and the police lab; all are important in solving the crime. The ending occurs in the prison with the warden arresting the third party, responsible for masterminding the felony-robbery.Watch Chan work his clues finding the guilty while freeing the convicted. There is relief found in the son offering his hand in solving the crimes, and the vaudeville routine breaks the detective work, only to provide comical pause.

Monogram Pictures had a hit-or-miss record with the Chan series, but for fans of the characters and of Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland and Benson Fong, "Dark Alibi" can make a rainy afternoon more enjoyable. To see Benson Fong in his best role, also watch "Flower Drum Song."

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?

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.