ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS*** Being arrested and roughed up by the police especially after smashing Let. Park's, Casey Adams, face in with a coffee cup accused vagrant and drinking in public Al Willis, Gene Berry, is released due to lack of evidence. It's the next day that Parks is gunned down by an unknown assailant and a few days later two other cop are killed in a car bombing that has Willis, who claimed to get even with the police department for manhandled him, arrested as a suspect for all three murders. As we see Willis is as he always claims to be as innocent as the morning snow or is it dew but it's Chief of Detectives Joe Conroy, Sterling Hayden, who doesn't buy Willis' story.Going overboard in trying to arrest Willis for the murder of the three cops has Conroy suspended from the force and ordered to get a forced, by the department, psychological examination before he's allowed to get back to work. While on ice, or suspension, Conroy goes out on his own to get the goods on Willis whom he's sure is the one who murdered his three fellow policemen. This lead to this honky tonk town on the Mexican/USA border where Willis who works as a baker on the US side is the head mob boss there. There's also Willis' girlfriend Marianna, Gloria Grahame, who can't stand the guy but is terrified of leaving him in that if she did he'll murder her! ****SPOILERS*** Working behind the scenes, until he's discovered, Conroy gets to have Marianna, with a couple of free drinks, to talk about her boyfriend Willis' crimes including the one where he gunned down Let.Parks and even more important where he hid the murder weapon. Which is all the proof that Conroy needs to arrest him. Besides being a cold blooded murderer Willis isn't that bright either. Where he could have easily disposed of the gun he murdered Parks with he instead hid it in of all paces a local church! That Willis he attended not to pray but use as a alibi for where he was at the time that he in fact murdered Let. Parks. With the murder weapon recovered by Conroy Willis makes a run for it not on the street but on the neighbor rooftops where he's a perfect target for the perusing police. Gene Barry in one of the most craziest roles in his entire both film & TV career does a great job playing the Dr. Jekyll & Mister Hyde-like Al Willis who's so crazy it's a miracle that he can hold down two jobs, as a baker and mob boss, at the same time without anyone around, with the exception of the mentally and physically abused Marianna, noticing just who unstable he is. It's the suspended Chief of Detectives Joe Conroy who saw right from the start just how dangerous Wilis was and never stopped for a moment in trying to get the goods on him as well as have him arrested. That had the already not that on the ball, in his mental capacity, Willis crack and thus blow his cover as him being a perfectly normal and law abiding citizen which has him blown away at the end of the movie.

Laurence Tuccori I'm not sure how Universal slipped this one past the Bureau of Consumer Protection, but they did. Despite the title's bold claim, this 1954 crime drama features absolutely no nudity or alibis - clothed or unclothed. On the plus side, it does co-star the deliciously sexy Gloria Grahame, but on the minus side it's a very poorly written part which does nothing to showcase her particular talents. She plays Marianna, a saloon singer in a sleazy town on the US side of the Mexican border, who manages to get herself involved with both an ex-cop (Sterling Hayden) and the suspected cop-killer (Gene Barry) he is obsessively pursuing. Even by the often convoluted standards of film noir (which this movie aspires to be) plotting, the story makes little sense, but there's little else to distract the attention. Hayden sleepwalks through his part with the air of an actor focusing on his paycheck rather than the script's obvious flaws, while Barry struggles unsuccessfully to create some sort of plausible whole out of the many inconsistencies in his character. In one scene he's a baker and family man wrongly accused by bullying detectives of murdering an officer, and in the next he's a big shot gangster (without a gang or criminal purpose) on the Mexican border, splashing the cash, roughing up the locals, and inflicting his particularly aggressive brand of lovin' on Miss Grahame. Quite how or why he leads this double life doesn't trouble director Jerry Hopper. In fact, very little seems to bother Mr Hopper. Not the implausible plot, the waste of talent (Grahame and Hayden) or the film's slapped-together-on-a-shoestring feel. NAKED ALIBI was shot in large part on the Universal back-lot and it looks it. The town square will be instantly recognizable from countless other movies made by the studio, while the border town's back alleys and loading docks are littered with those empty wooden crates one only ever sees in such large numbers in low budget movies where they're trying to fill in the space without spending money on props. Production values are so low that NAKED ALIBI plays more like a lackluster 1950s TV drama than a big screen entertainment. If Hopper thought he was contributing to the often stylish and memorable canon of low-budget film noir thrillers which many studios turned out in the early 1950s he was wrong. The confused plot, unimaginative camera-work and cast going through the motions put paid to that. For the Gloria Grahame completists among us this is a must-see, for everyone else there's plenty of other, much more rewarding things, you could be doing with your time. Check out more of my reviews at http://thefilmivejustseen.blogspot.com/

timshelboy For the first half of this movie we get a rather ordinary policier, with "innocent" Gene Barry seemingly the victim of Bad Lieutenant Sterling Hayden's obsessive violence- Hayden suspects Barry of being a cop killer. Hayden's temper gets him the sack. Things perk up considerably when Barry goes on the run to the border and seeks out old flame Gloria Grahame - and her advent livens things up immensely. We first see her in a sleazy border bar miming and shimmying her way through "ace in the hole", spaghetti straps straining, mouth pouting, earrings dangling. Its an amazing entrance and the director knows it - following her after the number finishes as she fends off drunks and exits the bar to wander back to her room, where Barry surprises her - her complaints about his negligence in the lover department are stilled by a swift slap round her chops - and she of course kisses him more passionately and drags him into the room... discreet fadeout. That whole sequence is essence of Gloria - its all there - the masochistic sexuality, the wisecracks, the wiggling, the face half in shadows, the tawdry glamour, - and my god - that shimmy . The remainder of the film offers few surprises, including Gloria stopping a bullet to aid the hero and expiring glamorously in his arms but it was designed as a follow up to The Big Heat and the public liked it enough to make it a hit.

Nicholas Rhodes I saw this film many years ago in England and remember being shocked by it. Saw it once in France under the title "Alibi Meurtrier". It's a good film but I could not tolerate Hayden's "manipulation" of Gloria Grahame. Since that time, every time I see Sterling Hayden's face in a film I am filled with hate for this man !! But decors and music are good and the whole thing is a good example of a pessismistic film or 'film noir".