“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows”
By the mid-90s movies based on superheroes were in a challenging place – Superman was long gone, being resurrected as a soapy TV series, the failed Captain America movie had put any thoughts of a Marvel franchise on hold and the Batman series was on the downward slope following Tim Burton’s late 80’s resurrection of the character (though he would never quite go away).
So, the release of The Shadow, written by David Koepp and directed by Russell Mulchay (the man behind Highlander, ‘Ozploitation‘ favourite Razorback and, strangely, Derek and Clive Get The Horn) came at an interesting time.
The character, played here by Alec Baldwin in a false nose, was really precursor to Gotham’s ‘Dark Knight’, and was first heard and seen in radio serials and ‘pulp’ novels of the early to mid-1930s.
The Shadow is, by day, wealthy man about town Lamont Cranston who, in this version, spent a number of years after the First World War in the Far East first as an opium baron before training his innate talent of hypnotism, or “clouding men’s’ minds” as it is described here, in a suitably mysterious mountaintop monastery.
From there the movie sees him return to New York to face off with the last remaining descendent of Ghengis Kahn, Shiwan Kahn (John Lone), who is intent on either taking over the world or blowing up the city… looking for much more sense in the plot would be a mistake.
That said the film is great fun, if you leave common sense at the door and engage the part of your brain that likes cheese about as ripe as it comes.
Baldwin takes the film’s central role as Cranston/The Shadow and delivers a performance based on the topping of the finest croque monsieur, with virtually every line delivered as a mysterious whisper (feeling somewhat like a forerunner to Christian Bale’s unique vocal deliver in the Nolan Batman films).
So, if the story, cinematography and lighting didn’t hint at the character’s secretive nature, which they do, his delivery really rams it home with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but this fits with the tone of the film excellently.
Margot Lane, Cranston’s love interest/sidekick, is played by Penelope Anne Miller and spends most of the movie getting into various scrapes while wearing a range of extravagant dresses – again, it’s that sort of story. However, as it goes on there is a brief nod to this being the 90s where she comes to the rescue of our hero in the nick of time, before defaulting to the general damsel in distress nature of her character.
A strange bit of casting sees Ian McKellen as Margot’s bumbling scientist father, and to say its far from his cinematic highs as Gandalf or Magneto would be an understatement (and let’s even even try and compare with his stage work), while Tim Curry is suitably sleazy as McKellen’s assistant-come-Kahn’s American right hand man, giving the sort of performance that only he can give while chewing every piece of scenery available to him (but that’s why we love Tim Curry).
The film itself is a mixed bag of ideas thrown at the screen with some being hits and others misses, and Mulchay continues to demonstrate his love of exploding glass in a climax that very much echoes the end of Highlander if it were combined with The Man With The Golden Gun.
Along with this we do see Mulchay’s innate sense of visual style come to the fore as the film is packed with moments that feel torn from comic book splash pages.
A notable aspect of The Shadow are its special effects which, while at times clunky do include some surprisingly good computer animation for a lower budget film of this period, and they serve to enhance the sense of the magic used by the hero and villain very well.
Much like the set pieces and plot the tone of the movie is all over the place as it at once tries to evoke Burton’s Batman while also having a lighter side and also trying to stick firmly to the 30s pulpy, noir-ish, feel.
In this we have a hero who seems happy to if not out right kill, then certainly seriously maim anyone who gets in his way, while also being something of a savior of the city, all with Cranston having a streak of surprisingly off beat humour and innuendo – possibly this is an attempt to demonstrate the duality of the character implied throughout the film, but if so it doesn’t quite work, and I’m not sure any deeply psychological intention was ever intended given the overall feel.
On paper then it may not sound like a great movie, but when watched as a slice of fun, pulpy, minor-league, action adventure fare, there’s a lot to enjoy and, being from the mid-90s, my formative cinema years, The Shadow is always going to have a nostalgic place in my personal cinema history.
Looking quickly at this blu-ray release from MediumRare Entertainment, the picture transfer is suitably hit and miss, though is probably the best looking version of the movie available, meanwhile the 23-minute retrospective has some interesting input from some members of the cast crew (Koepp, Mulcahy, Baldwin and Miller are all present) but ends up mostly being a series of mutual backslapping talking heads, which is a bit strange for a movie that, while not a flop, was far from a blockbuster.
This review was originally posted on the Need To Consume site, which now sadly appears to be defunct, but I’ve kept my original screenshot of that here for posterity’s sake…
Tommy Girard 