There are some amusing moments in Shadows; not good moments, but amusing ones. Like when reporter turned detective sidekick Rex Lease trespasses on a boat and assaults the crew members. It’s a perplexing action sequence–the second fistfight in the (very long) chapter–and incompetently cut together. It culminates with Lease’s adversary clearly jumping into the water after being punched in the previous shot. There’s very little point in blaming editor Earl Turner for the terrible cutting. He obviously wasn’t working from very good footage.
Also with the boat fistfight is the lack of diegetic sound. There are some quiet punches looped in, but there’s a lot of silence in Shadows. Usually when there shouldn’t be, like after Lease is poisoned with gas and Jack Mulhall works frantically to save him. Once Lease is in the clear–the chapter runs twenty minutes and every time there’s something dramatic, you just wish it would cliffhang and it never does. But once Lease is in the clear, Mulhall just kind of makes fun of him for not taking the poisoning more seriously. There’s no question as to how or why Lease was poisoned.
The chapter starts with an exceptionally boring cliffhanger resolution, only for a deliveryman to team up with Mulhall and Lease for a car chase. The serial takes The Clutching Hand bit seriously, with the hand appearing out of nowhere (or through special secret, hand-sized passages) to wreck havoc. Or take packages. Anyway, there’s a whole subplot with the delivery guy. And Robert Walker and Jon Hall come back for a scene, because apparently they’re important.
If Mulhall had any good will, he burns through it here. He’s really bad opposite other actors, especially if they’re adversarial. He’s an understated blowhard.
As a spoof or a comedy, Clutching Hand might get some traction. Played straight, it’s just nonsense. Like Lease following suspect Bryant Washburn. Why’s he a suspect? Because he’s… present?
And the Clutching Hand makes an appearance–well, in silhouette because he’s the mystery villain–and gives his orders to his lackies over television. Then laughs manically.
For no apparent reason.
Oh, the car chase. I lost track of the nonsensical car chase with the mysterious moving truck guys attacking the heroes. Shadows is twenty minutes of nonsense flung at the audience.
CREDITS
Directed by Albert Herman; screenplay by Leon D’Usseau and Dallas M. Fitzgerald, based on an adaptation by George M. Merrick and Eddie Granemann and the novel by Arthur B. Reeve; director of photography, James Diamond; edited by Earl Turner; produced by Louis Weiss; released by Stage & Screen Productions.
Starring Jack Mulhall (Craig Kennedy), Rex Lease (Walter Jameson), Mae Busch (Mrs. Gironda), Ruth Mix (Shirley McMillan), William Farnum (Gordon Gaunt), Marion Shilling (Verna Gironda), Bryant Washburn (Denton), Robert Frazer (Dr. Gironda), Gaston Glass (Louis Bouchard), Mahlon Hamilton (Montgomery), Robert Walker (Joe Mitchell), Yakima Canutt (Number Eight), Joseph W. Girard (Lawyer Cromwell), Frank Leigh (Maj. Courtney Wickham), Jon Hall (Frank Hobart), Franklyn Farnum (Nicky), and Knute Erickson (Capt. Hansen).
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