In Defense Of. When bad movies go good.
Rotten Tomatoes: 34%
Let’s set the WABAC Machine to 1994: a simpler time. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin signed the historic Kremlin Accords, Kurt Cobain (probably) decided it was better to burn out than fade away and a handsome young devil named Alec Baldwin was one of the hottest properties in Hollywood. Fresh off a string of successes on Broadway (including a Tony nomination for his work in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire) and supporting roles in films like Beetlejuice and Working Girl, The Hunt for the Red October had him poised for a Harrison Ford-like career as a leading man. So why is his star vehicle The Shadow forgotten and shunned, barely garnering such limp praise as featuring “impressive visual effects, but the story ultimately fails to strike a memorable chord?”
It certainly can’t be for lack of trying. The Shadow boasts as solid a cast as has been assembled for anything but The Greatest Story Ever Told (also that one movie about Jesus): John Lone, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry, Ian McKellen, Jonathan Winters and a never-more-radiant Penelope Ann Miller. And it can’t be for its origin as a 1930s pulp hero; Warren Beatty’s glossy plastic incarnation of Dick Tracy had made bank only four years before. So what was the problem? The same thing that makes it a splendidly thrilling, enjoyable movie: it’s too fun.
The Shadow, as a character, is rooted in darkness. He is literally synonymous with the night; he’s the thing we fear most, the part of us that knows our hateful secrets, the thing hidden inside the evil part of us. He’s also a guy in a long black cape, hat and red bandanna with some really shiny guns. In the 1994 film’s version, he’s explained as the alter ego of Lamont Cranston, a WWI veteran who gave into his demons and became a feared opium warlord in Tibet, known as Ying Ko. He’s abducted by a Tibetan holy man who senses his psychic potential and is swayed to using his knowledge of man’s dark side and ability to “cloud men’s minds” to battle crime in his hometown of New York City. Given that Baldwin’s first appearance in the film is as a yawning version of himself with a Steve Perry hairdo and long nails, it’s best not to try to take the movie as a dose of gritty neo-noir.
Instead, The Shadow is good, pulpy fun. And I don’t mean to take it as irony or camp, either; that’s for when you have to make silk from pigskin or watch Ed Wood movies. Instead, The Shadow is a bright, vibrant movie, as in love with its period costumes and grimacing, melodramatic villains as it is its protagonist. The meticulous reconstruction of ’30s New York, its spunky screwball-style repartee between Baldwin and Miller, its sly digs towards the atomic bomb and the drinking habits of elder decades all come together as a rush of comic book fun.
And the cast seem to know it. Baldwin plays Cranston as a proto-Bruce Wayne, all Brooks Brothers suits and pick-up lines. He’s almost perversely smooth, managing to crack wise even with a bullet in his shoulder and certain death narrowly averted. As The Shadow, he’s a guignol terror with a booming laugh and a propensity for frightening his prey into madness; unlike many other superheroes, he’s certainly not averse to killing a hood or two. But while Baldwin may rule the roost with smarm, Lone matches him step for step (and a few more) with sheer bravado. As the antagonist Shiwan Khan, last descendent of Genghis Khan and badass psychic psycho, Lone tears up the screen at every turn, at one moment bloodthirsty and screaming for Mongol world dominance, urbane and gentlemanly the next. Of all the principal actors, Lone clearly saw his role as a comic book character most clearly: as an over the top villain. Curry and McKellen are reunited from their Broadway Amadeus for a few, too-brief scenes, but no one quite does creepy sleaze like the former. The makeup budget for flop sweat must have been intense, unless Curry brings his own to the set.
The Shadow managed to (barely) squeeze past its budget and remains a nominal financial success. Its reputation has not and that’s the great pity. While many adaptations of notable funny-book and pulp legends have suffered by going the serious route (Conan the Barbarian and Ang Lee’s Hulk come to mind), this movie strikes a deeper truth than the darkness and blood of those stories: they’re fun.
by Nathan Kamal
