The Shadow Returns

The movie is well enough to stand alone so you do not need to be aware of the earlier "Shadow".

Now do not go comparing this to the radio show as that is apples and oranges.

Lamont Cranston/The Shadow (Kane Richmond) promises to marry his secretary, Margo Lane (Barbara Read) that knows how to type with two fingers. That is unless a case shows up. You guessed it a case shows up in the nick of time.

The case is full of mysteries. Some obvious and some a bit more complex. For a cheap movie the more complex "What it is all about?" and "How did they do it murder?" are quite good.

For some reason, probably because it is a formula in detective movies, they had to have over the top comic relief in the form of a taxi driver/Shadow assistant.

Overlooking the not so bright chief of police and the comic relief, the program is worth watching.

Absolutely lame entry in the series. Except for the opening hook there's no atmosphere, a plotline that only Cal Tech could unravel, and a lead actor more suited for Father Knows Best than the sinister Shadow. Then too the fractured comedy crowds out anything more serious. As a mystery, it's about as involving as an ashpit. Okay, some snappy wisecracks are occasionally amusing, but just what the producers thought they were doing when they threw this mess together beats me. As a fan of the memorable old-time radio show, I'd like to sue Monogram for movie sacrilege. No, there's no need to go on. And please, I take no satisfaction in ridiculing this concoction. But a flop is a flop and this one just goes splat.

Second attempt at turning the radio character into a movie series. This time out its Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston and his alter ego the Shadow. Here he has no power to cloud men's minds, instead he wears a mask and a fedora. Here he is investigating the smuggling of jewels in coffins and the deaths the occur around it.

Very comedic the film has almost no suspense despite its best efforts. The broad comedy simply cuts across the mystery and takes away from feeling of danger. The ploy almost works, however about two thirds of the way through the film the mashing of styles becomes too much and the back and forth nature of the plot (There are only really three locations, the commissioner's office, the dead man's house and a warehouse) interest dissipates and you get the feeling you'd really like to just jump to the end to see who the killer is.

Worth trying but only on cable.

The first of three Shadow movies from Monogram Pictures, all starring Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, and Barbara Read as his girlfriend/assistant Margo Lane. The confusing plot involves jewels recovered from a businessman's grave, secret formulas, and a series of apparent suicide leaps that Cranston is convinced are murders - but cannot work out how they're done. As the police plod along in their investigation, Cranston - making a show of being an inept nuisance and getting in the way - secretly does some snooping of his own... as the Shadow.

Nothing is shown here of the Shadow's ability to hypnotise, become seemingly invisible, or 'cloud men's minds', and we never hear his demonic laugh. Instead he's more like the Saint or the Falcon - except that every now and then he pulls on a trenchcoat, hat, and mask. And whilst traditionally the Shadow's adventures have a pretty dark aspect to them (as captured well in the 1994 movie), here it's lighter, with lots of snappy banter played for laughs. The cast are solid, B movie regulars who do a good job with what they're given, and the leads are engaging; but the mystery doesn't really grab hold, and the whole thing ends up feeling pretty frivolous. 5/10.

Of all the heroes and superheros of the thirties and forties, the shadow is the most intriguing. In his (Orson Welles-created) radio incarnation, he had a strange superpower. He could be invisible and apparently enter and leave any room effortlessly. On the radio, this was a great effect because of course we listeners couldn't see anything at all. So when one of the characters couldn't see another, it was a sort of narrative fold that drew us in.

Another device was a sort of demonic laugh, a sort of devilish celebration of justice.

How to transport that to cinema? The 1994 version was something of a miracle, one of the best designed movies ever. In that interpretation, the girl was decorous, the bad guy evil and the shadow genuinely invisible as well as having other superpowers.

This one is horrible in all ways except for the effort put into the comedy. The mystery isn't, though it has an interesting device, more improbable than most.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.