INVISIBLE AVENGER (1958)

The Shadow, aka Lamont Cranston, is a vague construct of a hero, sometimes a vigilante crimefighter, sometimes a detective. He is best encountered in the pages of the pulp magazines, radio shows and paperbacks that made him popular. There, he was a figure of mystery who could cloud men's minds, turn invisible, and creep people out with an eerie cackling laugh. For some reason, however, the Shadow has never been well exploited on the movie screen, with the possible exception of the 1994 film with Alec Baldwin, and I think it's because most of the silver screen Shadows don't have supernatural powers. In the Monogram film series from the mid-1940s and the 1940 Columbia serial, he's basically a Batman figure, a wealthy man who helps the police solve crimes. This hour-long cheapie gives him some powers but is otherwise drab and undistinguished. I suppose it's not fair to critique this as a feature film because it’s actually a two-part TV pilot that was never picked up. There's a reason that 1950s TV shows (except for I Love Lucy) have not remained in the pop culture eye: compared with recent shows, or even shows of the 70s and 80s, the 50s shows seem as primitive as silent movies do to current film fans. The sets here look like they could be knocked down by a mild breeze, the acting is quite bad, and the scene setups are downright claustrophobic, despite this being partly directed by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe. Still, I've gotten this far after having sat through the entire hour so I might as well forge ahead.

We get a shot of a New Orleans alley at night as a voice intones the famous radio show opening: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…" Pablo Ramirez is in exile, with his daughter Felicia, from his homeland Santa Cruz where his presidency was disrupted by a military coup led by the Generalissimo. Tara and Rocco own (or just hang out at, I was unclear) a jazz club called the Famous Door, but they are actually spies for the Generalissimo. Pablo gets jazz trumpeter Tony to contact his friend Lamont Cranston in New York to contact his friend The Shadow to help Pablo and Felicia. Tony calls Cranston but he is shot dead before he can finish his message. Nevertheless, Cranston and his mystic mentor Jogendra head to New Orleans. The Generalissimo executes Pablo's twin brother Victor, live on TV, in an effort to draw Pablo out, which it does. I lost track of the various comings and goings in the last fifteen minutes, but there is a nice plot twist near the end, and Cranston does help Pablo get the counter-revolution going. Richard Derr (pictured at left) makes for a sadly bland Cranston—he's not mysterious looking, not good looking, not inspiring in any way. Most of the other actors seem like amateurs, with the exception being Steve Dano who plays Tony, pictured at right. Sadly, he's killed off early on (this is also his only credited acting role). Otherwise, people either overact (Helen Westcott as Tara) or barely act at all (Dan Mullin as Pablo). Supposedly this was filmed on location but it sure looks like a bunch of cheap studio sets to me. The jazz music is OK. The invisibility effects are pretty good—Cranston, always shown in street clothes rather than as the slouch-hatted, semi-masked figure of the pulps,  vanishes completely with his shadow remaining or turns into a smudgy image, which is creepily effective. Dialogue is listless, with one memorable line from Pablo on why he must show himself again in Santa Cruz: "Courage will seep out of the people like wine from a broken bottle." That might be a good line poorly executed or a bad line well executed, but it stands out. The existence of the mentor Jogendra, who can telepathically communicate with Cranston, gave this a vague Doctor Strange feel. I can't recommend this to anyone except Shadow completists. [YouTube]