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."

The mystery here is not very compelling, which leaves the abundant comedy part that mostly is. Okay, I know the Moreland ("Feets don't fail me now !") brand of silliness is as politically incorrect as can be. But his bits, especially with Ben Carter, are still pretty funny, stereotypes aside. Too bad the weird-looking Milton Parsons (Johnson) doesn't get more screen time. Between him and the jolting Skelton Knaggs, they had the graveyard types of the 1940's all wrapped up.Seems an innocent man is about to be executed for a robbery and murder he didn't commit. So Charlie has a deadline to meet in clearing him. No dark houses or secret passages here, but there is a prop room full of weird theatrical props (probably Monogram's). Of course, the props meet up with Birmingham (Moreland) creating lots of amusing setups. Fortunately, soon-to-be cult director Karlson keeps things moving in smooth fashion, so we barely notice the skimpy whodunit part. All in all, it's one of the lesser Chan mysteries, but still has compensations.

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.

I was a fan of Charlie Chan when the films were first released. I did not realize Sydney was past 70 when he made this movie. There is a lot of humor in the prison scenes. There are a couple of big scenes that come as a surprise for a film that had a shoestring budget. One is the interior of a real prison with the convicts going into their cells in unison. That scene is melded into a stage copy of the same action but slightly more modest. Another scene has a big moving camera set as the cast enters a police lab. There are a lot of familiar faces in the supporting cast. Everyone does a great job with their role. There are some exterior shots of the old cars and trucks which were not that old when the movie was made. This is a good old movie to watch to get a glimpse of what the world was like right after World War II. While watching it you will want to check the ladies hair styles and the interior of the old rooming house and telephones.