International Crime (Charles Lamont, 1938)

Lamont Cranston (the magnificently-named Rod La Rocque) is an amateur criminologist also known as the Shadow who hosts a nightly true crime radio broadcast for the Daily Classic newspaper. Tipped off to a possible crime by his assistant, the somewhat scatterbrained Phoebe Lane (Astrid Allwyn), Cranston rushes to the scene, but it turns out to be a false alarm. However, a very real crime occurs across a town, involving a financier who is killed in the midst of a robbery. The police, in the form of Commissioner Weston, suspect ex-safecracker Honest John of the crime, but Cranston thinks otherwise, and with the help of Phoebe, Moe the cabbie, and Classic reporter Burke, he identifies the true culprits as a pair of European ne'er-do-wells.

As you can probably guess from the synopsis, this film, a sequel to The Shadow Strikes, doesn't have much to do with Walter Gibson's pulp novels. La Rocque's Cranston doesn't have a slouch hat, twin .45, Inverness cloak, girasol ring, or hawklike features, and is a pretty nondescript-looking fellow with a thin mustache. Neither does he possess an eerie laugh or any of the other abilities his prose counterpart possesses. So as a fan of the pulps in general and the Shadow in particular, you can imagine how disappointing to me it is in that regard. I do have to give the movie some small props though, as unlike The Shadow Strikes it does try to adapt some of the familiar characters. Commissioner Weston, Burke, and Moe are all from the pulps, although I don't recall the pulp Moe Shrevnitz ever being described as having a thick Yiddish accent. Phoebe Lane is of course derived from the radio show's Margo Lane, who was not incorporated into the pulps until 1941, a move that proved controversial with readers. Phoebe is not nearly as capable as Margo, and provides much of the film's comic relief, none of which is funny. The message of nearly every line she speaks seems to be "Ha-ha, look at this dizzy dame trying to be a detective!" (Excuse the alliteration.) Needless to say, this is a little unfortunate to modern viewers, as is a scene where Burke gets a shoeshine from an African-American man who behaves somewhat stereotypically, and repeatedly calls Burke "Boss"; Burke, in turn, calls him "Boy," though I'm sure the poor guy is in at least his twenties. In an otherwise good movie, I might have been willing to look past the sexist and racist elements, but here it's just cringeworthy in a film that already is a letdown. If you're a Shadow completist then by all means check this film out on Youtube, but otherwise don't bother.