Review of International Crime (1938) by Steve M — 06 Oct 2005

The Shadow DVD Double Feature (The Shadow Strikes/International Crime).

Starring: Rod La Rocque and Astrid Allwyn.

There are times when I wonder why production companies who spend good money on licensing existing properties don't keep their writers and directors in line when it comes to creating the screen adaptations. Heck, I don't understand *at all* why the owners of properties that are licenesed don't insist on some form of oversight and/or quality control veto-rights over what the licensee does with their creations. (And I hope to some day be fortunate enough to work on a propety where the owner doesn't care what the heck I do with it... so far, I've never quite been in that position, as every licensed property I've worked on has come with a very attentive and concerned person reviewing my work for the licensor.).

Take the truly awful adaptations of pulp-fiction giant The Shadow that are featured on "The Shadow DVD Double Feature (The Shadow Strikes and International Crime)" disc. The two 1937 B-features on this DVD bear only a passing resemblence to The Shadow and the adventures presented on radio and in print at the time. There's very little of the mystery (and none of the horror/thriller aspect) that surounds The Shadow and his cases... and Lamont Cranston exhibits no supernatural ability to "cloud men's mind" in either feature.

"The Shadow Strikes" comes closest as actor Rod La Rocque at least wears the trademark outfit (even if the cloak makes LaRoque look like a fat guy in a fedora instead of a mysterious crime-fighter) and works in the shadows to track down mysterious criminals.

However, in "International Crime," Cranston is a hardboiled radio commentator and criminologist who has a bad relationship with the police and solves crime more through trickery than detection. His identity as The Shadow is widely known, as it's the name of his radio show rather than a masked alter-ego.

Worse, the ever-charming and resourceful Margo Lane from the real stories and radio plays, who was always there to help both Cranston and his Shadow alter-ego, isn't anywhere to be found in "The Shadow Strikes," and is replaced in "International Crime" by a similarly named, truly annoying girl reporter (played by Astrid Allwyn, who is really the only attractive thing about "International Crime").

Whatever the reason, both these adaptations either got rid of what made The Shadow cool in the first place, or the scripts were pre-existing dogs on a production house's shelf that someone slapped The Shadow name on, and renamed the male lead "Cranston.".

There isn't anything to recommend these flicks to even for the biggest fans of The Shadow, or even to lovers of film noir and pulp fiction. They are just plain bad. Stay up late and listen for The Shadow radio plays on "When Radio Was.".