The Missing Lady

Starring - for the last time - Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, and Barbara Read as his girlfriend Margo Lane, this plays like a cheap version of The Maltese Falcon. The 'Missing Lady' of the title is a jade statue, stolen during a robbery in which an art dealer is killed. Cranston sets out to find the murderer and recover the statue, but whenever he thinks he's identified the culprit that person winds up dead as well, leading the police to suspect that he is behind the murders and the theft.

This final Monogram Shadow movie is the best of the three. The God-awful 'comedy' that plagued the second one is dialled right back, and whilst there's still light relief, it's nowhere near as insufferable as before. In fact the picture has a 'heavier' atmosphere throughout, and feels far closer to a straight noir mystery - Bogart and Cagney wouldn't look out of place! Like the last film the Shadow doesn't appear much, leaving Cranston to do the donkey work. But the solution is a satisfying one that makes perfect sense. 6/10.

So Kane Richmond takes top billing as the "Shadow/Cranston" but it's really "Miss Effie" (Almira Sessions) and "Miss Millie" (Nora Cecil) who steal the scenes as the busy-body lift operators who shimmy around in perfectly symmetrical attire running one of those counter-weight elevators that has a mind of it's own as they entrap their "passengers" whilst they accrue all the gossip. The rest of the plot is all centred on rather a silly misunderstanding between our sleuth and police inspector "Cardona" (James Flavin). You see, the eponymous character is not actually a person, but a foot-high jade statue worth a cool $250,000 - and it's been pinched. The policeman thinks it's a person but "Cranston" knows it's not - and that's the premiss of the hour as they both try to track it/her down whilst the body count mounts up. There's plenty of fisticuffs, trashed furniture and a few wise cracks along the way to an ending that's probably about as convoluted as they come. It's all production-line stuff this with little to remember, but I did think there was just a soupçon of charisma on display here from Barbara Read's "Margo" and the dynamic between the investigator, the inspector and is boss, the "Commissioner" (Pierre Watkin) does raise a smile now and again.

The Missing Lady (1946)

** (out of 4)

The third and final film in Monogram's The Shadow series has Lamont Cranston (Kane Richmond) being hired to try and track down the title item, not an actual person but instead a stolen jade statuette. If you read the review in Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide you'll see that this here actually got a fairly glowing review but I personally didn't think the film was all that good. Yes, it's about on pace with many of the mystery/crime pictures from its era but that doesn't mean it's a good movie. I think, once again, the biggest problem is that it was clear this film (and the series) was produced to cash in on the countless other studios who all owned their own crime fighters. The screenplay here is one that I'll at least give a little credit to because it does show that they were at least trying to do something that wasn't 100% routine like the previous film in the series. This one here at least tried to add a little more mystery and I do think they the producers went for more a film noir type of film rather than just your cut and dry mystery solver. I thought the screenplay did allow for a couple interesting characters and there was also some nice twists along the way. Another good thing the film has going for it is the supporting cast of players who actually make for some lively and fun character. Even Richmond has more life and energy than in the previous movie, although I'd still say he made for one of the least interesting heroes of his type. With a little style added in, there's no question that this is a step up from BEHIND THE MASK but it's still short of the best from the genre.

As a combination of poor lighting, poor scripting, and the poor print I watched (which did, however, bear the TCM logo, so there is probably none better available), "Missing Lady" is very hard to follow - in some instances, it is literally difficult to see what is happening on the screen. The film is half tough film noir (there is a gangster aptly named "The Ox"), half silly sitcom, with the exact same situations of the previous Monogram series chapters repeated (Margo being jealous of any woman Cranston meets, or even doesn't meet, the clueless police inspector shouting instead of listening to Cranston, etc.). There is also a bizarre duo of old ladies who race dual elevators and complete each other's sentences. Looking at this short-lived Monogram series as a whole, I would say Kane Richmond had potential as the Shadow/Cranston, but he needed to be surrounded by better writers, better supporting casts, and higher production values for the series to have any chance of lasting longer. ** out of 4.

A jade statue of a woman is extremely valuable and has been stolen. Now all sorts of crooks are flexing their muscles trying to find the work of art. In the process, some folks are murdered...and Lamont Cranston (the Shadow) is accused of the crime because, as usual, the police are stupid. So Cranston decides to investigate the case himself.

In too many ways this film is like any other private detective B-movie of the era (such as The Saint, The Lone Wolf or The Falcon) but little like the radio and pulp magazine versions of the character. Gone are the cool psychic Eastern skills, such as clouding of men's minds and mind control used by the Shadow. Instead, his skills seem much more mundane and this makes the story far less interesting than it should have been...which, oddly, is the case in many Shadow films. I simply don't understand why they took such a popular and exciting character and made him just like any other schmuck do-gooder B hero.