John Wayne in one of his early credited roles - Craig McCoy, a fancy flier. Dorothy Gulliver is "Jean", and her family is losing the circus if they don't come up with some cash fast. Wayne is the "Ace" who is determined to stop the "bad guys" from using and producing "the invention" stolen from the original "Eagle". Lots of unknowns here. It also seems to be a film made from a twelve episode series. The picture and sound quality are pretty rough. Much use of trick photography effects, to make it look like the plane was lighting the circus tents on fire, and even during the sky-writing itself. Skip this one. Stapled together from a serial series. Written and directed by Ford Beebe. Meh..... goes for 3 hours.

. . . of the director's cut for Erich Van Stroheim's GREED (which is the entire World Population alive Today), you'll swear that the 3 hours, 37 minutes of this "Mascot Serial" THE SHADOW OF THE EAGLE drags on for AT LEAST ten hours! SHADOW director Forde Beebe is so Hell-bent upon cramming every Bad Movie Cliché into SHADOW at least twice, you'll probably conclude that he's REALLY cousin Beebe Ford of THAT Ford Family. John Wayne drives home the SHADOW's message that corporate America is ALWAYS eager to short-change our heroic War Veterans (in this case, WWI pilot "Nate Gregory"). The Rich People Party gypped their winning team grunt soldiers who insured their ascendancy by triumphing in the War to End Lazy Southerners' Racist Slavery out of their full pensions. RPP President Hoover did worse, slaughtering a redacted number of WWI Vets seeking promised pensions, as well as their wives and kiddies ("Dead babies tell no tales," President Herb is said to have chuckled). Now the RPP's President-Elect Trump, who ducked service to America in Vietnam, plans to eliminate Veteran's Hospitals, throwing our current crop of Vets to the wolves. Who can save us? Now that John Wayne's gone over to the Dark Side, only the SHADOW knows.

While this is not John Wayne's finest movie, or even his finest serial, for fans of the cliffhanger it delivers plenty of action and pretty good acting.The main point of this review is to caution you about differences in the two DVD releases, both essentially from the same starting print. Decisions taken by the two different DVD production companies make all the difference in whether you enjoy this film or feel cheated. The two companies are Marengo Films and Platinum Disc. I first purchased the Marengo print and was so wholly unsatisfied with the editing and production that I went looking for another. I finally found it from a company named Platinum Discs.The Marengo release chops 5 seconds off the end of the film, leaving out completely John Wayne's closing scene. Also, the text that Marengo substituted for the studio's "The End" text is huge, blocky and computer generated. In short, Marengo has butchered the film for the sake of reducing the total number of VOBs needed to hold the DVD film image.The Platinum Disc release is the entire original film, not a single frame, more or less. My only disappointment with this version is they appear to have made no effort to clean up dust and scratches. The irony is that the Marengo print does have slightly more detail and better scratch and dust cleanup, however not enough, IMHO, to compensate for altering the original edit.Review written May 22, 2011 based on latest available releases from Marengo and Platinum.

The good guys never seem to catch a break. It added to the plot and my frustration. What a roller coaster of a movie. It was a good movie and keeps you on the edge of your seat rooting for the good guys to get one thing to go their way. Common John Wayne where, as the hero, he never gives up hope.Didn't realize that it was almost 3 hours till it got close to the end and I looked up at the clock.If you like b/w old movies, it's a good show to watch. I like John Wayne but have watched most of his older movies. It's a lot of fun to see a young John Wayne running around to save the day. If you don't like the older John Wayne movies, give some of is younger stuff a chance.