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     The Shadow Strikes

1937  NR  DRAMA  1h 1min

CAST— Rod La Rocque

MUSIC— Unknown  DIRECTOR— Lynn Shores  BASED ON— Characters appearing on The Shadow (radio)

     Super quickie mystery that produces more yawns than thrills. After the Shadow foils a robbery at an attorney’s office he, as his alter ego Lamont Granston (Cranston), leads the police to believe that he’s the attorney. Now a pseudo-lawyer he is called upon to draw up a will for a wealthy gentleman. When the man is murdered Granston is drawn into the case. Using various outdated sleuthing methods (none of which involve donning the guise of the Shadow) he and his driver/sidekick get the job done. Nothing groundbreaking here.

OUR RATING— * ½

FOLLOWED BY— International Crime (1938)

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     The Shadow Riders

1982  NR  WESTERN/TELEVISION  1h 36min

CAST— Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, Ben Johnson, Geoffrey Lewis, Jeffrey Osterhage, Gene Evans, Katherine Ross

MUSIC— Jerrold Immel  DIRECTOR— Andrew V. McLaglen  BASED ON— The Shadow Riders (novel), by Louis L’Amour

     Inauspicious Western telefilm that starts out well but meanders along the way. Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott star as two brothers (one blue, the other gray) whose paths collide after the Civil War. They soon learn that their sisters, Elliott’s girl Katherine Ross and many others have been kidnapped by renegades, former rebels who long to see the South restored to its former glory. The rebels plan to buy back that glory with the money they make by selling their captives into slavery. Selleck and Elliott will have none of this. They set out to free the captives and just maybe reignite the spark between Elliott and Ross. A forgettable experience (you probably won’t even remember the fun finale), though entertaining for the duration.

OUR RATING— **

     Shadow of the Thin Man

1941  NR  COMEDY  1h 37min

CAST— William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Sam Levene, Alan Baxter

MUSIC— Edward Ward  DIRECTOR— W. S. Van Dyke II

     A day at the races! As Nick and Nora Charles share in this guilty pleasure there’s trouble brewing behind the scenes. Gamblers and racketeers roam the grounds of multiple sporting events while bodies accumulate. It’s up to Nick (terrier Asta in tow) to get the dirt on the murderous scum once again. Plenty of comedy but too few scenes featuring both William Powell and Myrna Loy. Still, an entertaining ride into the convoluted world of murder and cover-ups.

OUR RATING— ** ½

PRECEDED BY— The Thin Man (1934), After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939)

FOLLOWED BY— The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Song of the Thin Man (1947)

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     Shadow of a Doubt

1943  NR  SUSPENSE  1h 48min

CAST— Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton, Macdonald Carey, Patricia Collinge, Henry Travers, Wallace Ford, Hume Cronyn

MUSIC— Dimitri Tiomkin  DIRECTOR— Alfred Hitchcock

     Another fine tale from the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Who inspires you? Your father? Your mother? Your murderous uncle who is wanted by the feds nationwide? To young Charlie the answer would be the latter. When her uncle Charles (after whom she was named) comes for a visit, everything is swell. But when his dark secrets begin to unravel, young Charlie’s inspiration soon becomes her worst nightmare. Packed full of drama and suspense, this one sure is a keeper. Final note: check out Hume Cronyn as a morbidly hilarious literary critic. Wouldn’t you love to have him over for a night of joyous conversation? Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.

OUR RATING— ***

REMADE AS— Step Down to Terror (1958), Shadow of a Doubt (1991)

     The Shadow

1994  PG-13  ACTION  1h 48min

CAST— Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Boyle, Ian McKellen, Jonathan Winters, Tim Curry

MUSIC— Jerry Goldsmith  DIRECTOR— Russell Mulcahy  BASED ON— Characters appearing on The Shadow (radio)

     Alec Baldwin plays the title character in this fun, superhero-esqe fantasy. Lamont Cranston, billionaire/playboy (sound familiar?) is secretly The Shadow, a mysterious nighttime avenger with the ability to cloud the minds of men, giving him the power of relative invisibility against his enemies. But now a new threat comes to town: evil Shi-Wan Khan (last descendant of Genghis Khan) plans to use an atomic bomb on all of New York City, in an effort to complete his ancestor’s mission in life, that of total world domination. The plot is pretty standard, yeah, but the film is still pretty good, with interesting characters and effects, giving its 1930s theme a definite 1990s edge.

OUR RATING— ** ½

     The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad

1958  NR  FANTASY  1h 28min

CAST— Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant (Crosby), Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher

MUSIC— Bernard Herrmann  DIRECTOR— Nathan Juran

     Ridiculous telling of the Sinbad Legend, this time fleshed out with special effects by the master, Ray Harryhausen. Sinbad and his band of sailors run afoul of a malevolent magician with a magical lamp on his mind. He loses the lamp when Sinbad rescues him from a killer Cyclops; he then journeys to Baghdad with the sailors, all the while yearning for the lamp. To coerce Sinbad into returning to the Cyclops-infested island Mr. Magician shrinks Sinbad’s fiancée down to Barbie’s size and claims that the only remedy lies on the island. From then on it’s all sailing, monsters, and mayhem, Harryhausen style, only minus the fun. Maybe you had to be there. Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.

OUR RATING— *

     The Seventh Seal

1957  NR  DRAMA  1h 36min

CAST— Max Von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot

MUSIC— Erik Nordgren  DIRECTOR— Ingmar Bergman  BASED ON— Wood Painting (play), by Ingmar Bergman

     Highly acclaimed allegory in which a world weary knight finds himself locked in a battle of wits with Death himself. Death comes to claim the knight but he first accepts a challenge to play a game of chess. As their game commences they study one another, engaging in meaningful conversation, neither one backing down from a challenging query. Meanwhile, all about them the land is laid desolate with people dying of the black plague. The knight, having just returned from the crusades, now sees the chaos around him and wonders about the meaning of life, about the existence of God, etc. Fine film for foreign film buffs and film students but from the viewpoint of the average movie-goer the entertainment value is sorely lacking. May take several viewings to sort out the details. In Swedish with English subtitles.

OUR RATING— * ½