Wow! Such a good movie.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Typical Hollywood manipulation of an existing fictional character. This time the Shadow is nothing more than a lure to get kids to listen to police reports. There is no relation between this version of the character or any previous versions. The Shadow is purely imaginary and exists only as a picture on the wall of Lamont Cranston's office and the heading of his newspaper column. The story itself isn't bad, but they could have easily have left any reference to the Shadow or Lamont Cranston out of it and it would have been just as well. If you are seeking a movie containing the beloved pulp fiction character you would be better to ignore this one and look elsewhere.

Rod Laroque is back for a second film as Lamont Cranston. As presented here, the Shadow is none other than a radio host who does a nightly broadcast commenting on crime in the city and offering theories and suggestions to listeners and police alike—he's a kind of Walter Winchell of crime.The plot concerns a blown up safe, a murder, and a large sum of money that a pair of shady Europeans are attempting to send or prevent from being sent over to their homeland. Those plot details are not abundantly clear; however, plot here is really secondary to the witty interactions between characters that produce quite an entertaining little film.There is, of course, the police commissioner who resents the Shadow's criticism but never misses a broadcast; Moe the cabbie always on standby to transport Cranston; and Cranston's crusty news editor.Most importantly, there is Astryd Allwyn as Phoebe Lane, a sort of unwanted assistant to Cranston who has her job only because she is the publisher's niece. Allwyn brings in misleading scoops, follows her boss around despite his protests, and—when alone in the office studio—practices her own radio broadcasts, imagining herself as the real brains behind the Shadow ("Ladies and gentleman, this is Phoebe Lane, the Shadow's shadow…"). Allwyn and Laroque have a nice chemistry and some fun wordplay; especially silly but amusing is the scene in which Cranston tries out on her every European accent he knows as they narrow down the nationality of the mysterious man she had earlier encountered.This Lamont Cranston is a harder egg than the one seen in the previous year's The Shadow Strikes. Early on in the picture, he is asked, "If it wasn't robbery, what was it?" His one word answer—"Murder"—is delivered while lighting a cigarette and with an edge altogether different from the secretive and somewhat mild character he played in the earlier film.Whether or not this Shadow is a worthy entry among the uneven ranks of other movie Shadows is for the purists to decide; taken strictly on its own as a low-budget mystery, International Crime is fast-paced, easy to watch and offers plenty of laughs.

In the late 1930's Grand National Pictures released two films based on the popular magazine and radio character, The Shadow. The first outing, 1937's THE SHADOW STRIKES saw silent film star Rod La Rocque donning hat and cape, in a rather bland drawing room mystery. Ironically, this crime thriller without the thrills had been very loosely adapted from a legitimate Shadow Magazine adventure. Considering the rather uninspiring result, it is hardly surprising that the studio decided to rethink their approach before putting a sequel into production. The result of this reconsideration, was INTERNATIONAL CRIME.INTERNATIONAL CRIME is an odd duck of a film. Gone was almost any connection to the Shadow character as he appeared in the magazine series, or even the character from the previous film. This time out, all inspiration was derived from THE SHADOW radio program.The thing that needs to be understood here is that The Shadow is really a split personality. The hawk-nosed avenger with the blazing twin .45's and the legion of secret operatives existed only in the magazines. On radio he was Lamont Cranston, amateur criminologist and "wealthy young man about town", who in the ancient Orient had learned the "power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." "Friend and companion" Margo Lane was also an invention of the radio series, though she was later shoehorned into the prose adventures as well. INTERNATIONAL CRIME features almost all the standards of the radio Shadow: Lamont Cranston, amateur criminologist, Margo Lane (though here called "Phoebe Lane") as his Girl Friday, cabbie Moe Shrevnitz, and foil Commissioner Weston. In fact, the only significant player missing is The Shadow himself.Cranston (still played by Rod La Rocque, but with considerably more energy) is now a newspaper columnist and radio personality who goes by the on-air non deplume of "The Shadow". In the middle of a broadcast, his overeager and stereotypically ditzy blonde assistant, Phoebe, hands him an ill advised tip on an upcoming box-office robbery, that is actually a red-herring to draw away the police so that another crime may be more easily committed elsewhere. Already in the doghouse with Police Commissioner Weston for his caustic commentary on the capabilities of the constabulary, Cranston's reputation is now on the line, unless he can solve the real crime, a combination theft and murder, himself. But the sleuthing is never really the main point of the film: the detecting is really just a framework to hang the movie's humorous elements on. At no time is there ever a real sense of danger to the proceedings. From the moment that Phoebe crashes into the middle of Cranston's radio broadcast, the audience knows what kind of film this is supposed to be and just sits back to enjoy the ride.There is one other very odd element to the film that begs noting –one that may have gone unnoticed by the movie going public of 1938. The criminal masterminds of the piece are Viennese nobility, plotting to halt a bond issue from foreign businessmen that will finance military forces in their homeland. On March 12, 1938, Austria was officially absorbed into Germany. Therefore the government that these conniving and murderous villains are working against, is the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. Today it is remarkable to consider that such a plot device could have been used in the same year that Neville Chamberlain made his fateful, "peace in our time" speech, and impossible to believe that such an element would have been allowed to stand if this film had been made even a year later.While fairly predictable, the film nevertheless rolls along at a good clip, providing a light weight, light-hearted and fairly amusing crime comedy in a similar vein, but a lower rent district, to the Nick and Nora Charles or Mr. And Mrs. Smith adventures. INTERNATIONAL CRIME is both a drastic change and a huge improvement over the feeble and stodgy THE SHADOW STRIKES.

Kind of disappointing to realize that these two Shadow films made contemporaneously with the Shadow pulp magazine and the radio show's original releases are far less faithful to the character's mythos than the 1993 film with Alec Baldwin! The pulp magazine is probably the most intense iteration of The Shadow, with plenty of supernatural adventures and mystical side tracks. The radio show is almost as good, with a little more crime busting/film noir attitude and lots more dealings with common thugs or criminal masterminds than with metaphysical foes.This film and its companion are the most lightweight of the bunch, with a very light tone and no mystical elements whatsoever. Everybody knows LaMont Cranston is The Shadow, who is merely a newspaper columnist and radio show host. None of the "wealthy playboy" secret identity here. None of the secret disguises (unless you count a monocle and a bad German accent), and none of the awesome "metaphysically manipulating the weak minds of criminals" mind tricks. BO-RING! No cool sidekicks; he has only his ditzy assistant, a narcoleptic leg man and a goofy Yiddish-accented cabbie with a gun-shaped cigarette holder to assist him.Going in to this with no prior knowledge of the Shadow character, I could see how somebody would find this to be an enjoyable puff piece. But I was bitterly disappointed, having read (only a few!) of the original Shadow stories from the 30's, and heard a few of the original radio shows. I won't give it the indignity of a one rating, since they did a fair job on a low budget. But a three is as high as I can go.