The Shadow

In the Opium Fields in Tibet after the First World War, the cruel and feared drug kingpin Ying-Ko is kidnapped by the holy Tulku that offers him to remove evil from his heart. In principle, the reluctant Ying-Ko does not accept the offer and is attacked by Tulku's powerful dagger Phurba. Then he accepts to study with Tulku and learns how to hypnotize and becomes invisible. Seven years later, he returns to New York City with his original name, Lamont Cranston, and becomes a wealthy playboy and the vigilante The Shadow, who fights the criminals. People that he saves become his agents, helping him in his fight against crime. He frequently needs to hypnotize his uncle Police Commissioner Wainwright Barth to forget The Shadow. When he meets the attractive Margo Lane in a restaurant, Cranston becomes afraid of her since she is telepathic and may learn that he is The Shadow. Out of the blue, the New York Art Museum receives a Genghis Khan's silver sarcophagus and inside is his last descendant, Shiwan Khan. He is a powerful former student of the Tulku, but he killed his master and intends to conquer the world. He meets Ying-Ko and invites him to team-up with him, but Lamont Cranston refuses. When Shiwan Khan abducts Margo's father Dr. Reinhardt Lane and his greedy assistant Farley Claymore teams up with him to build a powerful bomb, The Shadow needs the help of his friends to fight the powerful enemy.

Lamont Cranston assumes his secret identity as "The Shadow", to break up an attempted robbery at an attorney's office. When the police search the scene, Cranston must assume the identity of the attorney. Before he can leave, a phone call summons the attorney to the home of Delthern, a wealthy client, who wants a new will drawn up. As Cranston meets with him, Delthern is suddenly shot, and Cranston is quickly caught up in a new mystery.

Lamont Cranston (Rod La Rocque), amateur criminologist and detective, with a daily radio program, sponsored by the Daily Classic newspaper, has developed a friendly feud that sometimes passes the friendly stage with Police Commissioner Weston (Thomas E. Jackson). He complains to his managing editor, Edward Heath (Oscar O'Shea), over the problems that have developed in his department since Phoebe Lane (Astrid Allwyn) has been hired as his assistant. He is advised to forget it since she is the publisher's niece. During his broadcast about Honest John (William Pawley), a famous safe cracker who has served his time, Phoebe gives him a note that the Metropolitan Theatre is to be robbed at eight o'clock and she is so insistent that he adds it as his closing note. Off the air, he learns she got the information from a man she met in a café who had an honest face. Cranston goes to the theatre where Weston and his men have gathered and, of course, nothing happens but, across town, a safe is blown at the home of international banker Gerald Morton (John St. Polis) and the banker is killed. Cranston arrives there ahead of the police and discovers enough evidence to show him that it wasn't just a simple robbery with the banker accidentally killed. The irate Weston has him jailed as a material witness, but Phoebe comes through with a habeas corpus in time for him to make his broadcast. Honest John crashes into the studio with a gun and demands that Cranston exonerates him over the air from the police suspicion that he committed the robbery. Weston rushes to the studio but Honest John has escaped. Cranston takes Phoebe on a tour of night clubs hoping she will spot the man who gave her the robbery message. She does and Cranston poses as a new arrival from Europe and learns that the man is Flotow (Wilhelm von Brincken) and his companion is Starkov (Tenen Holtz'). They make a date for lunch the next day. While they are waiting for him to join them for lunch, Cranston breaks into Flathow's apartment where he meets Phoebe who also has had the same idea. A phone call is answered and Morton's butler says there is a meeting at the Morton home that afternoon.

People are literally flying off balconies to their deaths as Lamont Cranston, aka the Shadow, tries to make sense out of a confusing jumble of murders, disappearances, jewels that aren't jewels, hidden laboratories and secret formulas.

Lamont Cranston, aka the Shadow, has his hands full as the murder of blackmailing reporter Jeff Mann is blamed on him. Not only does the real murderer seem one step ahead of him as Lamont tries to discover his identity, but he is continually hampered from gaining crucial evidence by his jealous, interfering fiancée Margo Lane. Cranston perseveres and is rewarded with the clue he needs at one of Mann's victims' nightclubs.

A jade statue, "The Missing Lady", is stolen and its owner killed. Lamont Cranston, alias the Shadow, sets out to catch the killer but is blamed for the murders himself as each time he investigates some facet of the case another suspect is killed.

Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, investigates the murder of a New Orleans bandleader.

Columbia's 9th serial, slotted between "Overland With Kit Carson" and "Terry and the Pirates", was intended to have Lorna Gray in the role played by Veda Ann Borg, and to have been co-directed by D. Ross Lederman and Norman Deming. The credits specified the serial was "Based upon stories published in "The Shadow Magazine", while the ads proclaimed it to be "right out of the air waves and magazine stories." What appeared was a mixture of both with Lamont Cranston the true identity of The Shadow, although Lamont Cranston was only an occasional disguise of the pulp magazine Shadow. The hypnotic invisibility of the radio character was completely ignored, as was the almost invisible "Living Shadow" of the pulps.(In the serial, the only invisible man (The Black Tiger) was the villain, as even James Horne probably realized that six to ten henchmen taking orders from an invisible man was more plausible then six to ten henchman falling all over the place from unseen blows delivered by an invisible hero. Actually, based on how he directed serials, Horne would have most likely been in favor of henchies Charles King and Kit Guard exchanging punches with thin air.) Margot Lane was a radio-only character until 1941 when she was picked up by the magazine and also the comic books. Police Commissioner Weston and Inspector Cardona were characters who had appeared both in the radio series and the magazine, while Harry Vincent, used here as The Shadow and Cranston's chauffeur, general assistant and gofer, was from the pulp stories. Anybody watching the serial and expecting to hear Jory ask "who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men" had best bring a sack lunch and prepare for a long wait. The best line in the film, both in delivery and circumstances, comes when head henchie Flint advises his hapless,clueless but always-game cohorts that "The Black Tiger IS REALLY mad this time." Horne utilized Richard Cramer, from Horne's Laurel and Hardy days, as the "voice" of The Black Tiger, and Cramer read it with over-the-top ripeness from beginning to end, and one almost expects assistant-head henchie Williams to ask Flint how he could discern any degree of difference in the Black Tiger's attitude. That said, the plot begins with dynamited railroads, wrecked airplanes and blown-up industrial plants, with the clear message that nothing is safe from the machinations of the secret mastermind of the underworld known only as The Black Tiger. The man has plans to take over everything. While the police make only a few futile arrests, Lamont Cranston,noted scientist and criminologist, assumes the guise of a black-garbed, masked figure (The Shadow) to combat this evil. The police,of course, assume that The Shadow and The Black Tiger are one and the same. Cranston works with Police Commissioner Weston and a group of solid citizen businessmen including Joseph Rand, Gilbert Hill, Stanford Marshall, Turner and Stephen Prescott, and somewhere in nearly every chapter Cranston, Weston, Cardona and these solid citizens gather at The Cobalt Club and Cranston brings them up to date on the next steps to rid the city of The Black Tiger. Since one of the solid citizens is actually The Black Tiger, these meetings, for the most part, are counter-productive.