Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

I have one big complaint about Amazon. Rarely do they specify whether the movies are full screen or wide screen. For my preferences I never buy anything but widescreen. So this movie rates four stars from me but only got an official three stars because it is full screen. You would think that they would at least include that important distinction, in the description.

This is a flawed, yet very enjoyable, cinematic take on Walter Gibson's classic pulp hero, The Shadow.

It has the wrong director, Highlander's Russel Mulcahy, who has a nice visual instinct, but tends towards the slapdash as a storyteller. It has far too much of a camp sensibility and doesn't take its source material seriously enough, though thankfully not descending as far as the sixties Batman TV show. And it uses magnificent actor Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf, Magneto, Richard III...) in a tragically boring role.

But it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong.

Alec Baldwin is amazing as Lamont Cranston, the millionaire who spends his nights busting crime as The Shadow, and the visual take on the character is perfection. I very much enjoyed the way Cranston's face actually changes its aspect when he touches his inner darkness and becomes The Shadow, his eyes turning glittering black and his nose becoming the aquiline beak adorning hundreds of old pulp magazine covers. The Shadow's invisibility, which was treated as stealth and misdirection in the pulps, and as a form of hypnosis on radio, here is a form of mind control in which, appropriately enough, the dark avenger is invisible except for his shadow. This makes for some lovely effects, and my favorite moment in the film comes when bad guys target The Shadow's shadow and pin it to the wall with crossbow bolts....and Cranston emerges from the shadow, leaving his pinned cloak on the wall behind him.

The story is admittedly silly, but sets up the action set pieces nicely, and the cast overall is game and fun. In spite of its camp quality, there is some genuine and surprising wit in the film, particularly in a scene in which Cranston and new flame Margo Lane compare the dreams they had the previous night, and the scene in which archvillain Shiwan Khan visits Cranston at home and they talk about their tailors.

This is far from a perfect Shadow movie, but it is one that is a heck of a lot of fun.