The Missing Lady

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.

Various shady characters seek a mysterious one-foot high statue and are willing to kill for it! However...Bogart, Greenstreet, Astor and company are nowhere to be found. Instead we have Kane Richmond in another go around as Lamont Cranston, assisted by Barbara Read as Margo Lane.

At times this picture really does want to be The Maltese Falcon; at other moments, it lurches abruptly into unapologetic silliness. (For example: the hotel is owned by two elderly sisters who bought the place solely so that they could race the twin elevators up and down.) Most of the jokes are at least funny, which makes it easy to enjoy the picture, even if it does sometimes confuse in its unevenness. Cranston's assistant, Shrevvy, is goofy; Inspector Cardona is blustery; Margo and her own sidekick Jenny have ongoing jealousy issues over Lamont's and Shrevvy's involvements with various female suspects. However, the film's serious scenes are indeed strong enough to make those sudden shifts into slapstick somewhat disappointing as well as jarring.

Oh, the Shadow? Cranston's alter ego does pop into action occasionally, but frankly, the Shadow's appearances seemed almost obligatory on the film's part...maybe that's a reason the series kind of faded away after this entry. In any case, at this distance from the film's context and its character's place in pop culture, The Missing Lady is entertaining for an hour. But warn away the purists!

From the scant few films made about this fantastic character, this is probably the best one. Dealing with a 'Missing Lady' it starts out with The Shadow already involved in the case and goes from there. Although making little use of The Shadow's history from either radio or the pulps this film is a nice little mystery that has a definite dark edge to it. Compare the two scenes where Lamont Cranston gets interrogated, first by the police and then by the crooks. The first is set in a pitch black room with a single overhead light above Cranston, and the police are only seen when they lunge into the light to bark a question, then as quickly fade into the darkness. When the crooks kidnap and question Cranston, the room is well lit and the crooks speak in low tones, but the ominous threat of doom permeates the scene, one which Cranston barely survives. It's a shame there isn't a boxed set of the three Kane Richmond Shadow films released. I found the first film ver entertaining, the second second film disappointing, but "The Missing Lady" is a fine way to end an all-too brief series.

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.

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.