THE SHADOW STRIKES (1937)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* 
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Usually when a studio gets the rights to a serial property, the filmmakers use the first entry as a template for future entries, and only change the basic model for the hero's adventures over considerable time (if at all).  Grand National Pictures, the first film-studio ever to adapt the adventures of the pulp-magazine hero The Shadow, broke that particular mold.  After coming out with just one film showing their hero "Lamont Cranston" (or "Granston," depending on the film) as a costumed crimefighter, their very next entry in this "series" re-imagined the character as a completely down-to-earth crime reporter.

Directed by Lynn Shores (whose only other noteworthy film in my book is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM), THE SHADOW STRIKES is adapted from a Maxwell Grant Shadow story.  Indeed, the credits for STRIKES make pointed reference to the Shadow's origins as a "Street and Smith" character, though no such reference appears in the subsequent picture.  The story is an undistinguished mystery in the vein of "Who Killed the Rich Guy This Time," with a subplot involving the heroic "Lamont Granston" looking for the murderers of his father. This is apparently this Shadow's motive for having become a crimefighter.  I gather that by the end of the story he found them, because at the close Granston's confidante/butler wonders whether or not the hero wishes to retire the Shadow costume.  Frankly, I was too bored to follow the plot that closely.

LaRoque, an actor with a long list of silent and sound credits-- none of which I've seen-- acquits himself reasonably well in the Granston role, but Shadow fans then were surely disappointed that he only changed into a Shadow-like outfit twice in the film, and only very briefly.  When he first appears in a darkened room and gets the drop on a couple of crooks, he's wearing only a black hat and a black cloak, with nothing whatever to guard his face.  Author William Gibson detailed all sorts of illusionistic devices that the prose Shadow used to make it seem as if he disappeared before his opponents' eyes.  The Grand National Shadow looks like he could be exposed by shining a flashlight in his face.