User Reviews

this is the third of six movies in the Shadow series of movies,and the first of three starring Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow.Cranston is played in this one as more of a flippant smart alec.he is the nemesis of the chief of police,who resents him butting in on his cases.this one has a darker tone than the firs two(The shadow Strikes,and International Crime).the story is fleshed out a bit more here,and there is more action.minor spoiler***The Shadow is actually a suspect in this mystery***.Shrevvy(Tom Dugan)Cranston's trusty cabbie and helper)has a bigger role to play in this one,and it's funny to see him mangle some of his words.this movie does have its slow spots and does seem dragged out at times,but overall,it was enjoyable.my vote for The Shadow Returns is a 5//10

Second attempt at turning the radio character into a movie series. This time out its Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston and his alter ego the Shadow. Here he has no power to cloud men's minds, instead he wears a mask and a fedora. Here he is investigating the smuggling of jewels in coffins and the deaths the occur around it.

Very comedic the film has almost no suspense despite its best efforts. The broad comedy simply cuts across the mystery and takes away from feeling of danger. The ploy almost works, however about two thirds of the way through the film the mashing of styles becomes too much and the back and forth nature of the plot (There are only really three locations, the commissioner's office, the dead man's house and a warehouse) interest dissipates and you get the feeling you'd really like to just jump to the end to see who the killer is.

Worth trying but only on cable.

to make a real Shadow movie this time. Burbank & Hawkeye appear although they don't actually do anything - in fact you'd think they were Lamont's buddies rather than The Shadow's agents from they way they are depicted.

Don't get me wrong, its better than 'International Crime' because it does at least feature The Shadow even if he isn't depicted as well as in the earlier serial or the pulps. And it does have more action than 'The Shadow Strikes' (it could hardly have much less). It would be nice if Margot wasn't a pretty much total flake and more of an agent/assistant/non-idiot. Though she comes off looking good next to Cardona & Weston who make the Keystone Kops look and sound good (yes, I know the Kops were silent but that would be an improvement for this film).

See it if you can but don't go out of your way.

Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane have sneaked into a darkened office. Lamont puts his ear to the safe dial but fears that it's too old and rusty for him to crack. Margo suggests that perhaps it's not locked, if it's such an old safe, which comment prompts a dirty look from Lamont. Undeterred, she reaches past him, turns the handle, and... bingo! opens the safe. With a sweet smirk, Margo then neatly sums up everything you need to know about this film: "Not a profound piece of deduction, but...cute, don't you think?"

Well, Lamont Cranston is not particularly impressed, and for all I know neither will true fans of the Shadow be amused. But...that's about what we get from this movie. I suspect that my own minimal knowledge of the Shadow and his various incarnations only increased my capacity for enjoying this film. And enjoy it I did--while it's no great shakes, it's fast moving, has some humor, and has enough plot to at least carry the jokes and various relationships.

"Enough plot," I say--which I guess really isn't much, since it struck me during the final suspect-gathering scene that I really barely recognized any of the roomful of suspects. However, Lamont knew them all, and he pointed the inspector in the right direction, and he also maintained the secret of his other identity. And importantly: Kane Richmond does make it all look like fun.

The Monogram series is usually panned and rightfully so, but it is not without some interesting pieces. The change in characterization of Lamont and Margo is somewhat shocking. From the all business approach of the radio serials, we now have the couple engaged to be married and trading wise cracks. This Thin Man/Nick & Nora Charles approach falls somewhat flat as writer George Callahan is no Dashiell Hammett. Shrevvy is a comic character with little intelligence. Burbank operates a detective agency and opens the films giving The Shadow a tip about a possible crime. I would have liked to have seen more of his character as the interpretation is very straight, without comedy, but he has a very minor part in the Monogram series.

The mystery elements of the film are pure George Callahan. As in his Charlie Chan screenplays, the actually mystery is not important. Callahan's screenplays contain wacky gadgets and fun settings, but the mystery is an after thought and not played on the square. Here, a businessman has smuggled jewels into the country in a casket. Crooks gather at his estate to buy the jewels. Before a sale can be made the police and The Shadow arrive on the scene. Right before their eyes, the businessman jumps from a balcony to his death. The Shadow knows the man did not jump, but was murdered. Now he sets out to learn how he was murdered and by whom?

Of note, the filmmakers decided to show The Shadow as a shadow on the wall. He is never seen in costume, only as the shadow. This works well for me. The largest detriment to the series is the abundance of comedy. Add to that Shrevvy's characterization which is very poor and hurts the film because he is in it so much.

The movie is well enough to stand alone so you do not need to be aware of the earlier "Shadow".

Now do not go comparing this to the radio show as that is apples and oranges.

Lamont Cranston/The Shadow (Kane Richmond) promises to marry his secretary, Margo Lane (Barbara Read) that knows how to type with two fingers. That is unless a case shows up. You guessed it a case shows up in the nick of time.

The case is full of mysteries. Some obvious and some a bit more complex. For a cheap movie the more complex "What it is all about?" and "How did they do it murder?" are quite good.

For some reason, probably because it is a formula in detective movies, they had to have over the top comic relief in the form of a taxi driver/Shadow assistant.

Overlooking the not so bright chief of police and the comic relief, the program is worth watching.

It's rather odd that the Shadow films weren't all that good. The Shadow was a very popular character on the radio and in magazines yet the film versions of the character were, for the most part, a big failure. You would have expected more films in the series as well as better films but this is not the case--they are often pretty limp mystery stories. "The Shadow Returns" is yet another attempt to re-introduce the character--and this time Kane Richmond stars as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow. Richond was the most successful of the actors who played him, but this was only for three poor to mediocre films.

If you are unaware of The Shadow, Lamont Cranston supposedly learned some amazing hypnotic techniques in 'the East' that allow him to cloud the minds of people. He can either seem invisible or make people confess to their crimes. However, oddly, this incarnation of the character hides a lot and doesn't use his cool skills to get to the heart of matters. In many ways, he's not a lot different from The Saint or Charlie Chan--other than his cool voice and great wardrobe! The story is an odd one. As the mystery unravels, each time the police or The Shadow try to question a suspect, the suspect throws himself off the balcony to their death! Soon Cranston realizes that someone else has Shadow-like powers and they are making people kill themselves rather than confess. BUT, and this annoyed me, no one thought about just interviewing people on the first floor!!! Or, taking them into custody and handcuffing the suspects to the cops so they cannot jump. Or, handcuffing them to a heavy table or knocking them out first! Duh.

An even bigger duh is Cranston's man-servant, Shevvie. Shevvie might just be the most annoying and stupid sidekick ever. Heck, he makes Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) from the Charlie Chan flicks seem like a rocket scientist by comparison! Shevvie just talks and talks and talks and cannot seem to shut his yap and most every minute he's on the film seems to last an eternity. So, while Kane Richmond didn't do a bad job, Shevvie (as well as Cranston's fiancée) were too annoying and steal all the focus of the film.

To make things worse, some of the story elements are just plain dumb--such as Mr. Yeoman (who OBVIOUSLY is wearing a disguise) and the use of the whip near the end of the picture. All in all, the film's dumb writing and bad writing make you wonder why anyone would have approved of making two more films in this incarnation!

Although many of the B&W crime movies from the 30s and 40s, this one is truly awful. It seems that the writer/directory/producer never listened to a single Shadow radio show or read one of the comics. The makers of this film could have done far better by adapting almost any of the plots used in the radio shows to film.

The Shadow had "the ability to cloud men's minds", becoming completely invisible. In this film, Cranston simply puts on a black mask and dark coat, then turns out the lights. He always carries a gun, which the radio Shadow never did.

The plot itself was pretty weak, with Cranston coming and going from crime scenes and donning his Shadow disguise for no obvious reasons.

The first of three Shadow movies from Monogram Pictures, all starring Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, and Barbara Read as his girlfriend/assistant Margo Lane. The confusing plot involves jewels recovered from a businessman's grave, secret formulas, and a series of apparent suicide leaps that Cranston is convinced are murders - but cannot work out how they're done. As the police plod along in their investigation, Cranston - making a show of being an inept nuisance and getting in the way - secretly does some snooping of his own... as the Shadow.

Nothing is shown here of the Shadow's ability to hypnotise, become seemingly invisible, or 'cloud men's minds', and we never hear his demonic laugh. Instead he's more like the Saint or the Falcon - except that every now and then he pulls on a trenchcoat, hat, and mask. And whilst traditionally the Shadow's adventures have a pretty dark aspect to them (as captured well in the 1994 movie), here it's lighter, with lots of snappy banter played for laughs. The cast are solid, B movie regulars who do a good job with what they're given, and the leads are engaging; but the mystery doesn't really grab hold, and the whole thing ends up feeling pretty frivolous. 5/10.

"The Shadow Returns" (1946) looks a lot like the Monogram Charlie Chan films made around the same era: it is cheaply produced and claustrophobic. The plot is murky, though the murder method is certainly original - I never recall seeing it before. Square-jawed Kane Richmond is a slick Lamont Cranston, and more shadow-y than Rod La Rocque in the two 1930s Shadow films: he does wear a cape and mask at times, and his second identity is a secret to most people. There is some nice banter between him and eternal fiancè Barbara Reed; there is also a comic-relief chauffeur who seems modelled on Mantan Moreland in the Chan films. ** out of 4.

Of all the heroes and superheros of the thirties and forties, the shadow is the most intriguing. In his (Orson Welles-created) radio incarnation, he had a strange superpower. He could be invisible and apparently enter and leave any room effortlessly. On the radio, this was a great effect because of course we listeners couldn't see anything at all. So when one of the characters couldn't see another, it was a sort of narrative fold that drew us in.

Another device was a sort of demonic laugh, a sort of devilish celebration of justice.

How to transport that to cinema? The 1994 version was something of a miracle, one of the best designed movies ever. In that interpretation, the girl was decorous, the bad guy evil and the shadow genuinely invisible as well as having other superpowers.

This one is horrible in all ways except for the effort put into the comedy. The mystery isn't, though it has an interesting device, more improbable than most.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Sometimes I wish that we were able to give a single movie two reviews, and this is one of those times. I gave it a two-star rating because it is an excruciatingly bad move in every sense of the word. The plot, writing, acting, direction, camera work, sets, continuity, and everything else you can thing of relating to a film are bad, bad, bad. . . And yet, on an entertainment level, I would have given it eight stars A lot of bad movies are terrible to slog through, but this one. . . . This one was a joy. It was fun and so jaw-droopingly, gob-smackingly awful that the feeling of disbelief that washed over me as I watched it lifted me almost to a euphoric height. I'd rather watch a movie like this than ten $100,000,000 Jar Jar Binks -style atrocities.

Absolutely lame entry in the series. Except for the opening hook there's no atmosphere, a plotline that only Cal Tech could unravel, and a lead actor more suited for Father Knows Best than the sinister Shadow. Then too the fractured comedy crowds out anything more serious. As a mystery, it's about as involving as an ashpit. Okay, some snappy wisecracks are occasionally amusing, but just what the producers thought they were doing when they threw this mess together beats me. As a fan of the memorable old-time radio show, I'd like to sue Monogram for movie sacrilege. No, there's no need to go on. And please, I take no satisfaction in ridiculing this concoction. But a flop is a flop and this one just goes splat.