The Shadow Strikes
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Lynn Shores
Rod La Rocque
Lynn Anders
James Blakely
Walter Mcgrail
Bill Kellogg
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
When The Shadow, a mysterious and masked crime fighter, finds the men that gambler and racketeer Brossett sent to break into attorney Randall's safe, he apprehends them and turns them over to the police. Later, while investigating the crime scene, police captain Breen discovers Lamont Granston, whose secret identity is The Shadow, nosing around the safe, and Lamont succeeds in fooling Breen into believing that he is Randall. As they are about to leave, Lamont answers Randall's phone and poses as the absent attorney. The caller, old millionaire Caleb Delthern, wants Randall to come immediately to help him re-write his will. Breen, overhearing the conversation, insists that Lamont go to his client. Upon his arrival, Lamont is instructed by Caleb to omit his niece Marcia from the will because he does not approve of her plans to marry Warren Berranger. Soon after ordering his niece's disinheritance, Caleb is shot and killed by a bullet shot through an open window. When the police arrive, they arrest Winstead Comstock, Marcia's cousin and the designated heir to Caleb's millions, who was seen walking in the garden. They release him, however, when they realize that there is not enough evidence to charge him. After the police and Lamont leave, Marcia's brother Jasper comes home drunk, after having lost a great sum of money at Brossett's gambling house. Brossett, aware of Jasper's bad credit, has threatened to kill him if he does not pay his gambling debts soon. Jasper desperately tries to borrow money from Winstead, and when he refuses the loan Jasper becomes angry and picks up a gun. At that moment Winstead is shot dead. Although it appears as if Jasper killed Winstead, the authorities later prove that the bullet that killed Winstead came from another gun. Warren, meanwhile, begins to suspect that Lamont is a fraud and soon finds out that the real Randall is out of town. Hoping to learn more about Brossett, Lamont poses as Randall's assistant, bugs Brossett's office and subsequently learns that Brossett has been planning to acquire Jasper's portion of the Delthern estate. At the Delthern house, Brossett's thugs hold up Marcia, Winstead's brother Humphrey and Warren, and demand that they give them Caleb's will, until Lamont, in his Shadow disguise, rescues them and foils Brossett's plan. When Brossett and his cohort, Wellington, show up at Lamont's home, intent on killing him, Lamont manages to create a distraction that results in Brossett and Wellington shooting each other. Before dying, Wellington confesses that he is Warren's father and that he killed Caleb and Winstead so that his son and Marcia would inherit Caleb's money and have a better life. Later, Lamont meets the real Randall, who forgives Lamont for impersonating him when he learns that he solved an important mystery.
Director
Lynn Shores
Cast
Rod La Rocque
Lynn Anders
James Blakely
Walter Mcgrail
Bill Kellogg
Cy Kendall
Kenneth Harlan
Norman Ainsley
John St. Polis
Wilson Benge
John Carnivale
James Morton
John Dilson
John Elliot
Crew
Arthur Alexander
Max Alexander
Edward L. Alperson
George Harmon Coxe
Charles Henkel
Jahnke
John Krafft
Marcel Le Picard
Al Martin
Al Martin
Fred Preble
Henry Spitz
Rex Taylor
Richard Tyler
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Working titles for this film were Mr. Shadow and The Shadow. Cinematographer Marcel Le Picard's surname is misspelled "Pickard" in the onscreen credits. Studio publicity material indicates that the film was intended to be the first in a series of four "Shadow" films starring Rod La Rocque. A second Colony "Shadow" picture, entitled International Crime, was released in 1938, but no subsequent "Shadow" films were produced by the studio. Studio publicity records also note that producers Max and Carl Alexander were nephews of Carl Laemmle, and that Lynn Anders, formerly known as Agnes Anderson, had her name changed at the request of studio officials. Maxwell Grant, the author of the short story on which the film is based, also wrote under the name Walter S. Gibson.
The "Shadow" stories were first popularized on the radio when the series began in August 1930. Orson Welles, who played "The Shadow" in 1937 Mutual radio shows, is perhaps the best known "Shadow," but the series continued until December 26, 1954. Other films based on the character created by Maxwell Grant include a series of short films produced by Universal, begining with the 1931 film A Burglar to the Rescue, directed by George Cochrane; and a 1946 Monogram film entitled The Shadow Returns, directed by Phil Rosen and starring Kane Richmond and Barbara Reed. In 1994, Russell Mulcahy directed Alec Baldwin and John Lone in The Shadow.
