The Shadow (1994)

User Rating:

5.6/10   

Director:

Russell Mulcahy

Writers (WGA):

Walter B. Gibson (character The Shadow from stories)
David Koepp (written by)

Release Date:

1 July 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery

Tagline:

The Shadow Knows!

Plot:

In 30's New York City, the Shadow battles his nemesis, Shiwan Khan, who is building an atomic bomb.

Plot Keywords:

City | The Shadow | Bomb | New York City | 1930s

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Alec Baldwin	...	Lamont Cranston / The Shadow
John Lone	...	Shiwan Khan
Penelope Ann Miller	...	Margo Lane
Peter Boyle	...	Moe Shrevnitz
Ian McKellen	...	Dr. Reinhardt Lane
Tim Curry	...	Farley Claymore
Jonathan Winters	...	Wainwright Barth
Sab Shimono	...	Dr. Tam
Andre Gregory	...	Burbank
Brady Tsurutani	...	Tulku
James Hong	...	Li Peng
Arsenio 'Sonny' Trinidad	...	Wu
Joseph Maher	...	Isaac Newboldt
John Kapelos	...	Duke Rollins
Max Wright	...	Berger

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence.

Runtime:

108 min | Canada:93 min (edited version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS-Stereo | DTS

Certification:

Australia:M (TV rating) | Australia:PG | Canada:14A (Ontario) | Iceland:14 (original rating) | Iceland:16 (video rating) | South Korea:15 | Argentina:13 | Finland:K-14 | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 | Peru:14 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 | Germany:12 (video rating) | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Company:

Bregman/Baer Productions

Trivia:

The billboard of the 'Smoking man' is a parody of a real one that actually blew 'smoke' rings...the original was for 'Camel' cigarettes, whose motto was "I'd walk a mile for a 'Camel'!"; the 'Llama' cigarette motto parodies this with "I'd climb a mountain for a 'Llama'!"

Goofs:

Continuity: In the tank scene, the gunshots are on one side of the tank. However, when Claymore locks the door, there are gunshot holes beside the door. This is further shown to be wrong when The Shadow breathes through the bullet holes. He has to swim across the filled tank to get back to the door. However, when Margo arrives at the door, there are bullet holes right next to her.

Quotes:

Margo Lane: We need each other.
Lamont Cranston: No we don't.
Margo Lane: We have a connection.
Lamont Cranston: No we don't.
Margo Lane: Then how can you explain that I can read your thoughts?
Lamont Cranston: My thoughts are hard to miss.
Margo Lane: And why is that?
Lamont Cranston: Psychically, I'm very well endowed.
Margo Lane: I'll bet you are.

Movie Connections:

References The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Soundtrack:

REMEMBER

Fun Film, Beautiful Looking, Great Performances

Before BATMAN, there was THE SHADOW. In the history of troubled billionaires donning disguises at night, THE SHADOW told the story of Lamont Cranston before Bruce Wayne's story filled DC Comics' pages. Finally, in 1994, the long-running radio drama came to life on the big screen in one of the best adaptations since Tim Burton brought The Dark Knight to the silver screen in 1989. For some reason, the movie never caught on with the public; maybe not as many people remembered the radio version as I did. I loved it, though; I could watch this film again and again.

Alec Baldwin (BEETLEJUICE, HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) plays Lamont Cranston, a former drug lord who is captured by a Tibetan monk and retrained to fight evil as his penance for doing it. Cranston's power is a kind of hypnotic telepathy; he has the power to "cloud men's minds", which he uses to make himself invisible to evildoers except for his shadow (because light itself can never be fooled).

Cranston lives an exciting double life in what is apparently a glamorized version of the 30's, playing the town as a billionaire playboy and building up a secret network of helpers from those he saves as The Shadow (each identified with a silver fire opal ring given them upon their rescue), until he meets his match in two ways: Cranston loses his heart to enchanting-but-scatterbrained Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller), and The Shadow must fight his evil counterpart, Shiwan Khan (John Lone), last descendant of Genghis Khan, who has a hypnotic telepathy of his own and is seeking to bring life as we know it to an end using elements that have never been combined before (Dr. Roy Tam to Cranston: "I guess you'd call it an implosive-explosive-submolecular destruction device." Cranston: "Or an 'atomic bomb'." Tam: "Hey, that's catchy.").

Forget trying to follow the plot; like BATMAN, the plot isn't the point. The point is the look and feel of the movie, and this movie has glamour and pizazz to spare. 1930's New York City has NEVER looked better. The special effects are brilliant (at one point, as water rises in an enclosed room, the invisible Shadow's legs make deep dents in the rising water) and very well used throughout, so that they are not intrusive but rather a part of the story. Like BATMAN, there's also a large assortment of anachronistic gadgetry (pneumatic tubes delivering messages over a sophisticated network, video phones, elaborate neon billboards) that somehow work with the story as well. And the acting--Baldwin, Miller, Lone, Peter Boyle as Cranston's driver, Tim Curry as an evil scientist in league with Lone, Ian McKellen as Margo's father, another scientist whose discoveries are exploited by Khan--is also first-rate. THE SHADOW is the perfect Saturday Night movie: Fun to watch, attractive-looking, and not terribly taxing on the brain. Go see it.