I loved listening to "The Shadow" on the radio and I liked the serial starring Victory Jory (and I'm now showing my age, aren't I?) I LOVED this movie! I can't say how many times I've seen it...in the theater, as a VHS and now on DVD.Great sets, just surreal enough to give that "comic book" air but not enough to be ridiculous, the designs and costumes catch the era perfectly from the Bauhaus phantom hotel to the image of the Shadow on the staircase, cape swirling around him, pistols at the ready.There's catchy dialogue and the cinematic work/editing exceptional. Alec Baldwin is perfect as the "Arrow Shirt Man" hero, though I wish they'd managed to show a little more of Lamont's pre-Shadow life. As far as I'm concerned, everyone was perfectly cast for their roles, from Baldwin on down to Tim Curry.I have no idea why this didn't do better at the box office than it did, unless it's because few of the younger generation of the viewing audience weren't aware of who and what the Shadow was. Too bad, for they missed an very entertaining film. Their loss.My only wish: That there had been a sequel.

Enjoyed the stylish setting, clothes and period details of this well-made film. Alec B. and Penelope M. are at their best here in this period thriller. So much fun, even with an over-the-top plot. Great attention to detail--wish I could visit 1930s NYC and go to the Cobalt Club and wear such swanky gowns... We first saw this when it came out in 1994 and I enjoyed it even more recently. The original radio shows were before our time so I don't know how accurate or faithful it was to the series, but I felt the concept and characters were conveyed in an original, entertaining way. The tension between the leads was believable and subtle, and their chemistry was wonderful. What a treat--a feast for the eyes and still GREAT after 20 years!

It's after WWI Tibet. Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) is a brutal opium drug-lord known as Ying-Ko. He is kidnapped by the men of holyman Tulku. Tulku teaches him to cloud men's minds except for his shadow. Seven years later, he is back in NYC as a vigilante crime fighter known as The Shadow. Shrevnitz (Peter Boyle) is his cab driving sidekick and police commissioner Wainwright Barth (Jonathan Winters) is his uncle. Cranston falls for socialite Margot Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) but her natural telepathic power threatens to reveal his secret. Her father Reinhardt Lane (Ian McKellen) is an atomic scientist working for the War Department. Shiwan Khan (John Lone), the last descendant of Genghis Khan, is another student of Tulku. He is even more powerful than Lamont. He has resisted the change to good and plans for world domination. He has accumulated a special metal and with a mind-controlled Reinhardt, he is building an atomic bomb.This has a lot of visual style of a comic book late 20s. It's well done with the Chinese motif. The style does overwhelm the movie a bit. I wonder if the movie needs some humor to balance out the darker tones. Baldwin has a couple of snappy lines. I think he could have done more along that line. Also he needs a funny sidekick. The movie is not serious enough to go all dark.

I would put the Shadow in to a genre named comic book superhero. The movie is adapted from the comic book The Shadow and attempts to capture the essence of it. I have not read this comic; actually I have not read many comic books, but this is a genre that I like.The movie begins with how the Shadow came to be. The Shadow used to be a Tibetan opium lord that was vicious and evil. He was then captured by a monk and forced to pay penance for all of the evil that he had committed. The opening portrays the Shadow as being quite evil. Now he is able to confuse men's minds and walk around invisible.The movie is set in the 1920's to 1930's. This time tends to attract a lot from this genre (such as the Phantom) as this is a time when the world was modern. The automobile has been invented, cities of skyscrapers dominated the world, and people were just beginning to fly in aeroplanes. Even so, there were still parts of the world, such as the jungles of Africa, South America, and Asia, that were still virtually unexplored, leaving openings for a sense of magic and mysteriousness. Much of the world was tame, but there were parts of it that were still very wild, and in this wilderness lurked great evil.The Shadow is a film about redemption. There is a positive and a negative side to this. The negative side is that it takes the philosophy of a balance, that we can cancel out our bad deeds through good deeds. Thus the truly wicked people, such as the Shadow, must work extra hard to cancel out these deeds. Unfortunately, things do not work like this. There is no scoreboard of good or bad deeds, and even so, it does not solve any problems either. There is absolutely nothing stopping us from performing bad deeds when we know that all we have to do is perform a good deed to make up for it. For anything to work, all of one's bad deeds need to be wiped off at once, and then one must be prepared to turn from their old ways and lead a new life.On the other hand, we see another side of redemption, and that is that it is open to anybody. The shadow was an incredibly wicked man, being responsible for many atrocities. He is a man that one can outright say is beyond salvation; yet he is redeemed and when he is redeemed he turns away from his past. Unfortunately, the way this film puts it, one's past is always there to haunt you. Your evil deeds will never go away, they are a part of you and will always be so. This is not true with Christ. Not only does one not have to worry about working off one's evil deeds (for his death has already done that), but once they are gone, they are gone for good. The term "born again" highlights this. One is born again, a new person whose past has gone.The Shadow I liked, though I tend to enjoy movies like this. There are occasional plot holes and spots of bad acting, but in general it is a reasonable film, one that I would watch again.