The Shadow Strikes

This SHADOW is not the Shadow of the radio or the comics or even the Alex Baldwin movie of recent vintage. Rather, it is about a bon vivant who likes to play detective and gets mixed up in a murder mystery during which he impersonates a prominent lawyer. This would be all well and fine if Lamont Cranston donned some sort of disguise as the lawyer -- the Shadow is a master of disguises -- but he does nothing to alter his appearance and depends way too much on being able to conveniently appear, disappear and then reappear as the lawyer, who happens to be on vacation. So it's not really the Shadow, but at the very least star Rod La Roque (now there's a moniker!) plays Cranston as a real smoothie. The Shadow as such (and again I must point out this is not the Shadow most of us know, just a guy wearing a hat and hiding his face) puts in all of a 10-second appearance at the beginning and end of this dated little melodrama. Watch it for La Roque, a silent-era heart throb who survived the transition to talkies.

For anybody who enjoyed the last movie update of the Shadow, this movie might be a bit of a shock. The movie lacks the character of the Shadow, twice we see the man and even then he lacks the magic and is just a man with a coat and had whom's face you don't see. Never you see why he strikes fear in the hearts of criminals.

It looks like a detective story with as an afterthought the character of the Shadow thrown in. The story is about Lamont taking the identity of an out of town lawyer and in doing so he gets involved in a murder plot. As usual it is about big money to be inherited and gambling. And even the evil gangster in this movie is laughable, he seems to do his own things instead of his men, which proves his downfall.

As a mystery, nice ending, as a Shadow movie a tad disappointing.

The Shadow has a mustache?!

The film doesn't really introduce either Lamont Cranston or The Shadow, but seems to assume the audience knows them already. Editing and cinematography are pretty poor, as is the writing and acting. Cranston/The Shadow is surprisingly careless, doesn't laugh, doesn't say "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men...The Shadow knows," or "the weed of crime bears bitter fruit," and appears to lack "the power to cloud men's minds." He evidently has only one servant, not a whole network.

A subplot involving the mystery of Cranston's father's death is barely explored and seems an afterthought, despite the film's suggesting this may have been the reason for the genesis of The Shadow.

Still, it's sort of fun.

Rod LaRocque stars in "The Shadow Strikes" from 1937.

La Rocque plays Lamont Cranston, known to the underworld as "The Shadow" - a shadow who appears when a crime is being committed and stops it in its tracks.

I must say first that this is not my idea of The Shadow. I thought the Shadow was just that, a shadow on a wall who could talk. Not here. He's a person in dark clothing with his face covered and wearing a black hat. Big disappointment.

Anyway, in this film, The Shadow stops a robbery at an attorney's office. He then is forced to impersonate the attorney, George Randall, when someone runs in with an urgent message that one of his clients wants to see him.

It appears, to me anyway, that no one had ever seen this attorney because everyone believes Lamont is Randall. I started wondering if The Shadow appeared to people in a different face and used a different voice to impersonate someone, and we were just to assume that.

Lamont as Randall is summoned to the home of a Mr. Delthern, who wants to immediately change his will as he fears for his life. As he's in the process of changing the will, he's shot through an open window.

Lamont identifies himself as Randall to the police and helps work through the mystery.

This is pretty lame. However, how can you miss out seeing Rod La Rocque, one of the great silent film names, and in a talkie, no less? A trained stage actor, he survived talkies until he quit in 1941 to become a real estate broker, working with his wife - Vilma Banky! Another silent name! And they were married for 42 years. All pretty impressive.

Worth it to see La Roque, an old-fashioned type of leading man in the style of Warren William, William Powell, etc., mustached and smooth.

Former silent screen matinée idol Rod LaRocque stars as the famous radio detective The Shadow in The Shadow Strikes. Modern fans will remember the film with Alec Baldwin in the Nineties playing criminologist Lamont Cranston aka The Shadow.

The Shadow has a real bag of tricks and the power of illusion at his command. He's not a superhero as such with any real superpowers, but his knack for remaining inconspicuous while waiting to strike was what radio audiences thrilled to.

Unfortunately this film was made by the short lived Grand National studios, a B picture company with limited budget and consequently limited production values. At a major studio even in their B picture unit The Shadow would have fared better.

As it LaRocque is fine in the part and in this case as The Shadow he foils a robbery at a lawyer's office. When the police come he pretends to be that lawyer and the police captain accompanies LaRocque on an errand to a rich man's home who called and wanted the attorney to draw up a new will. But before that could happen John St. Polis playing the rich Mr. Delthern is shot by a sniper.

The plot gets thicker than an Irish stew. But the story was a serviceable murder mystery without the whole Shadow gimmick which wasn't utilized to the max. That must have disappointed fans back in 1937.

Always good is Cy Kendall who plays a gambler/racketeer who has a vested interest in that will. The heavyset Kendall is always playing bad guys in modern dress and in westerns.

Still bad production values from Grand National don't augur well for viewers who might want to see The Shadow Strikes.