SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

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.

Three former convicts have served time in States Prison together. At one time or another, each has been convicted of bank robbery based on fingerprints found at the crime scene. Charlie Chan's hunch is that the fingerprints were forgeries, and the victims were all set up by the real thief. Only one of the three is still alive, and he's just been arrested for the latest bank heist. If you're keeping score, "Dark Alibi" is the eighth installment in the Monogram Studios series of Sidney Toler Charlie Chan films. Benson Fong is Number #3 Son Tommy; and after a one film hiatus (Red Dragon), Mantan Moreland is back, this time sharing equal billing with Ben Carter. The two reprise their "Pidgin" English escapades from "The Scarlet Clue" with three different conversations that are the comedic highlights of the film.As usual, there is a lot of misdirection with the introduction of the suspects, but one good clue comes with the identity of States Prison inmate #8251 - Jimmy Slade, a fingerprint file clerk. But rather than being the master criminal, he winds up being a victim, as does his wife, known to us as Miss Petrie. It's interesting how many times the same gimmicks are repeated in the Chan movies. Back in the 1940 film "Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise", Chan throws a coin to test the response of a man who claims he's hard of hearing. He does it here as well, and again uncovers the subterfuge.As we've seen before, the mastermind behind the bank robberies and the murders is revealed at the end with no fanfare or buildup, only the convincing explanation by Charlie Chan himself. The film almost had me though, I thought the warden was in on it!For a Monogram, this is a fast paced fun film, made even more enjoyable by the Moreland/Carter dialog. It's a good enough reason by itself to watch "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?