The Shadow Laughs

Let's try to remember that this film was produced in the depths of the Great Depression and on a shoe-string budget. The story-line plot is "a bit thin", to put it kindly, and the matter of the "five missing thousand dollar bills" really doesn't bear too much thinking about. Nevertheless, there is some really good character portrayals in this movie, with very credible performances by Harry T. Morey (Captain Morgan), Robert Keith (George Hackett) and John F. Morressey (Sgt. Owens). Good comic relief is provided by Harry "Hal" Short as Lieutenant Clymer and Geoffrey Bryant as "Ryan). The two central characters of Robin Dale and Ruth Hacket are well played by Hal Skelly and Rose Hobart. It is just a "fun movie"; try to appreciate it for what it is.

In the 1930s and into the 40s, a popular sort of film were murder mysteries where non-policemen decide to investigate and prove to be smarter and more effective than trained detectives! In many cases, these know-it-all amateurs were newspaper reporters, but school teachers, doctors and many others seemed more adept at solving crimes than the dopey police!

"The Shadow Laughs" is such a film....with a fast-talking reporter who investigates crime and is much more successful than the law. However, unlike most of these films, it's an incredibly cheap picture....far cheaper than the many made by Monogram and other tiny studios of the day. Apparently, Trojan Pictures wasn't quite as good as the other so-called 'poverty row' productions.

The film begins with a bank robbery performed by a bank employee. But in a REALLY badly written scene, the thief tells his unseen accomplice that he's NOT happy and plans on going to the police....a stupid cliche which means that the guy will soon be found dead. Is anyone THAT stupid??? And, because of this, the cliche is a bad one.

Now, enter the nosey and very pushy reporter. He shoves his way into the investigation and is able to make the cops, not surprisingly, look pretty dumb.

The dialog is bad, the production very cheap looking and there is only one reason I would recommend the movie....to see Cesar Romero in his first film. But to me, this isn't enough reason to watch a movie that is essentially like 10000 others...but much more poorly made.

This is an early sound film with tons of talking, attempts at humor and what could be generously called uneven acting. The plot has something to do with a bank robbery and murder being investigated by the police and by some newspapermen. There are no shadows, no laughing and just boredom.

Fifteen minutes or so of what is suppose to pass for pithy dialog I hit the fast forward button to get to the end. I was hoping that at some point it was going to start making sense, it never did, they just kept talking endlessly while throwing characters and situations into the mix. I really can't say much more beyond that since by the end, I had no idea what was going on, even with stopping to see what the latest twist was.

I do have to admit that a good chunk of the problem comes from when this film was made, which is the early days of sound. In those days poverty row producers would just crank out anything with sound because people would go see anything that talked, it also resulted in many stagnant scenes (which this movie is full of) because no one could move very far from the microphones.. They also had to fill the slots on their bookings so lots of crap was churned out. This is one of the turkeys.

This is one to avoid.

I see that some outfit called Trojan Pictures inflicted this one on the movie-going public in 1933. I'm wondering if the company was offering protection with that tile.

This film makes some of the Sam Katzman Monogram products look like Citizen Kane. The leading man is a vaudeville performer who died shortly thereafter in a car crash. Watching the film I could see Hal Skelly as some kind of performer with songs, dances, and snappy patter. But his patter here was more annoying than anything else.

Skelly plays a reporter who makes a pest of himself with the local police in trying to solve two murders. The telltale clue are thousand dollar bills left at the scene of each murder and attempted murder, there are some of those. As they have consecutive serial numbers the value is nil to the unfortunate robbers.

But our culprit has another game in mind and you will have to endure this cheaply put together film for the answers.

Had this not been the film debut of Cesar Romero who plays a gangster here, The Shadow Laughs would have never been rescued from oblivion.

If you want to see it you will not be impressed by the not so snappy patter.

There's a bank robbery, and reporter Hal Skelly is assigned to cover it. He gets a lead on five stolen $1000 bills. They begin turning up tied to murders.

It's an early example of Snappy-Pattering Reporters Solving Crimes. The problem is that the witticisms are not particularly good, and that Skelly delivers them in a hesitant manner, as if he's polishing them as he goes along. It's a potentially interesting way of delivering them, but it doesn't work. Of more interest is Rose Hobart as his love interest. With a short haircut, she looks striking and modern. You can also spot Cesar Romero in his movie debut as a hood.

Arthur Hoerl directs from his own script. This is, I expect the reason why this movie drags so badly. Although his scripts for other directors were not particularly distinguished, his record of more than 150 writing credits over 45 years indicates that he worked cheap and fast enough to keep the shoe-string producers content. His last credit was on a movie in 1968, the year he died at age 76.