SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

gorf While it's only loosely based on the radio show and the pulp magazine, The Shadow is a very exciting and entertaining serial. Victor Jory, who plays the Shadow, does a good job as Lamont Cranston. It also helps that he looks almost exactly like the one on the pulp magazine covers. The costume is good, but would have been even better if it showed Jory's nose. And his laugh is perfect, he sounds like the radio version.The main villain in The Shadow isn't a guy with a mask like in many of the other serials, but an invisible man who speaks through the head of a "black tiger". It's a bit creepy. He's also a very, very angry and impatient man, and treats his henchmen like crap. I don't know why people want to work for this jerk.I've seen better action scenes in serials, but the last chapter where The Shadow confronts "The Black Tiger" is pretty intense. Unfortunately, the cliffhangers aren't very interesting. Most of the time it's just explosions or falling objects that knock The Shadow out for a little while. The Shadow isn't perfect, but it's still better than most of the action movies we have today, where the fight scenes look more like dancing than actual fighting.

blackcurtain Personally, being such a radio fan, I have come across some information that other reviewers do not seem to be aware of. First of all is the fact that the portrayal of the Shadow in this film predates, for the most part, the characterization of the Shadow in the radio series. There are a few differences between the original version of the Shadow and that of the radio show.Originally, the Shadow was a mysterious host of a show called "The Street and Smith Dectective Story Hour." He had no character. However, the sponsor of the program eventually noticed that the host of the series was more famous than the series itself.Thus, a series of "Shadow" novels came out. The Shadow, while lacking the ability to make himself invisible, managed to steal other people's identities. He would run around, pretending to be someone else, while not having an identity of his own.Originally, the identity of Lamonte Cranston was just a stolen identity. Some time after the Shadow had been spun off into a comic book series of his own, Margo Lane met a man named Lamonte Cranston on a cruise. On the way back, the Shadow masqueraded as Lamonte Cranston and Margo Lane got the two confused.This is more or less the version of the Shadow that the serial bases itself upon. The radio series started with a Shadow who had all kinds of abilities. However, the series gave the Shadow the power of invisibility and toned down all the other powers to the point that the radio version of the Shadow practically had no other abilities.Needless to say, saying this version of the Shadow is disappointing just because it is not the Shadow of the radio series is not fair. The serial would have very likely been based on the Shadow of the pulp novels, comic books, etc, of the thirties. The radio series, which did not become popular until some time later, gave the Shadow his powers of invisibility and pretty much got rid of the rest of his abilities. This is something other reviewers do not appear to be aware of.

wdlngduc The thing I remember most was the deep, resonant voice of Victor Jory, who played The Shadow and Lamont Cranston. "What evil lurks in the hearts of men, the Shadow knows..." He kept me and my friends spellbound. We went to the theater every Saturday, never missing a single episode of that wonderful potboiler serial. We didn't care what the feature was, we were there to see The Shadow! All for dime! What memories... Ah, those really were the days!

Steve-171 Typical Columbia missed opportunity. Silly plot, director more at home in comedy shorts (and it shows), and a ludicrous villain with all the real menace of a banana; but it could have been bearable if they hadn't changed the Shadow himself so much. Victor Jory makes the most of the material, but now he's just a criminologist who tosses on a cloak and hat and goes around fighting evil. No invisibility (although the bad guy CAN), hardly any mocking laughter, just explosion after explosion trapping him, only to have him rise from the debris, dust himself off, and head out the door to the next explosion. Turn off the lights and go back to the radio...