DARK ALIBI
US, 1946, 61 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sidney Toler, Manton Moreland, Ben Carter, Benson Fong, Teala Loring, George Holmes, Russell Hicks.
Directed by Phil Karlson.
Dark Alibi is one of the last Charlie Chan films with Sidney Toler. It was released the year before he died.
Charlie Chan is visiting and becomes involved out of sympathy with the young woman whose father has been convicted of bank robbery and who is about to be executed. The film opened with the bank robbery and the arrest of the father who stated been locked in a building for hours. Then his fingerprints are found at the scene of the crime. He is tried, the evidence all against him, found guilty. The public defender is unable to help because of the evidence.
Charlie Chan visits the house, assembles all the people In there – plenty of suspects. The daughter is also helped by a personable young prison guard.
Manton Moreland is on hand again with his back comedy, looking somewhat inappropriate – and he also has one of those conversations, as in previous films, with comedian Ben Carter where each of them talks filling in the conversation without the detail being explicit, much to the puzzle of Tommy Chan, Benson Fong once again. As usual, Manton Moreland as Birmingham Brown is continually afraid, Tommy Chan intervening and getting the two into trouble, including in the prison, wrongly suspicious of two convicts, trapped in their cell – with one of them admiring Charlie Chan who convicted him and wanting to shake his hand!
The prison warden, Russell Hicks, is cooperative. What emerges is that there has been tampering with reproducing fingerprints, consulting with experts, working out how it could be done, a young woman who lived in the boarding house having a connection with one of the convicts, and, in a final revelation, the personable young warden being identified as part of the crime set up.
Some of the other members of the household are also involved, a talkative travelling salesman as well as the manager of a theatrical warehouse – who is also murdered.
