Customer Reviews

The Shadow (3-Hour Collectors' Editions)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this as a Christmas gift and was rather shocked. I thought it was a large boxed set, with nine discs, based on the description here. But it is actually six episodes on three discs from all over the Shadow's history. I love the episodes, that's not the issue, that product description needs to be changed.

The Episodes that are in this collection are as follows:

The Caverns of Death 9-11-38 ***
Orsen Welles & Margot Stevenson
A so-so episode about a cavern, and some death. Not really up to par with the best Shadow fair.

Gun Island 10-23-38 ****
Bill Johnstone & Agnes Moorehead
A fantastic episode with pirates and patriotism. This episode is worth it just to watch the political soft shoing they had to do in those days. I love the Bill Johnstone Shadow years just because of the political atmosphere and the scary things their writers cooked up.

Hypnotic Death 2-12-39 *****
Bill Johnstone & Marjorie Anderson
I always love episodes when Cranston/Allard has to face a fow with hypnotic powers.

Friend of Darkness 2-19-39 ***
Bill Johnstone & Marjorie Anderson
A wonderful PSA on seeing eye dogs.

Evil In the House 11-7-48
Bret Morrison & Grace Matthews

Until Death Do Us Part 3-6-49
Bret Morrison & Grace Matthews

Based on the product, I give it *****. Based on Amazon's greatly missleading discription I give it **.

I'm buying this because I only own one of the 18 listed episodes, and I'm always looking to add a few Shadows to the collection.

I was introduced to this wonderful old program when I was a little kid back in the early 80's. On long family car rides I would wake up in the middle of the night, and every now and again some radio station would be playing an episode. The violence and Old Testament morality of the show scared the hell out of me when it wasn't making me laugh myself into apoplexy. It wasn't long before I landed my first tape, an episode called "Death from the Deep" about a rich psychopath who trolls the seas in a custom-built submarine, sinking passenger liners and machine-gunning their crews. It featured what might be the best piece of cartoon villainy in all of entertainment history, when the baddie, smooth-talking Barry Vinton, exclaims: "Ah, this is the life, there's nothing like it. The sighting of fresh quarry in this periscope. The excitement of the chase and the spine-tingling thrill as the torpedo finds its mark. And then the climax, on deck with a machine gun, shooting them down like scurrying rats. Ha ha!"

I don't know about you, but (to paraphrase Homer Simpson) I like my beer cold, my women hot, and my villains EEEEEEVIL. And nobody delivers mustache-twirling villainy like "The Shadow."

The Shadow had a certain formula I grew to love as I began to buy episodes as a kid. Besides the frantic organ music and Margo's tendency to get kidnapped, it fell very heavily into the eye for an eye school of justice. To hell with shades of gray: the bad guys here were not merely bad, they were awful, literally bubbling over with villainy. It was a public service to kill them, although in fairness to the Shadow, he usually tricked his enemies into killing each other, climbing into booby-trapped boats, or blundering into 20 trigger happy policemen led by the bumbling Commissioner Weston. It is interesting to note that the obvious crazies, the mad-scientist types who wanted to put human brains in gorillas and phantom-of-the-opera type psychos who strangled women and beat their faces in, were shown no more mercy than the gangsters who had actually chosen to be evil. Didn't matter to the Shadow. If he couldn't trick you into blowing yourself up, he'd have you on an express train to the death house, and never mind your mental illness. And he wasn't above taunting his opponents even after they were beaten. In "The Silent Avenger" he actually taunts Joey Brecker as he is being taken to his execution. As I said, very Old Testament.

Personally, I think Welles was the best (although Morrison and Johnstone were also very good). His rich voice was marvelous on the ears, capturing the essence of Cranston -- a combination of effortless, almost smug brilliance, British suaveness, dry wit, decency, cruelty, and ruthless obsession. In some ways he reminds me of a combination of James Bond, Batman, and Sherlock Holmes, all in one. And contrary to popular legend, Welles did not refuse to rehearse for his Shadow sessions out of ego, although he did opt out of them in his contract, he simply didn't have time. In 1938, Orson was doing full-time on Broadway, sometimes two or three shows a day, and actually hired a private ambulance to drive him, sirens blaring, from 42nd street to the studio so he could make it to Radio City for airtime without getting pulled over. If that isn't dedicated, what is?

Whoever your favorite Shadow, you know when you hit "play" on one of these puppies, you're gonna open up that mind's eye and let it feast on a darkly violent city landscape where the bad guys always finish last....if they finish at all.

4/12/09 UPDATE

Audiotapes are a dying, nearly extinct breed nowadays, and the vast majority of extant "Shadow" episodes are now available in electronic formats, but I'd like to point out that this collection has one episode which is virtually impossible to find anywhere else, in any format (casette, CD, MP3) -- "Preview of Terror." If you are a truly crazed "Shadow" fan, this collection is probably worth getting for that reason alone. Now, the actual lineup on this package, at least the one I got, is:

The Death House Rescue (Welles -- this is the first ever "Shadow" episode)
The Circle of Death (Welles)
The Death Triangle (Welles)
The Society of the Living Dead (Welles)
The Plot Murder (Welles)
The White Legion (Welles)
The Hypnotized Audience (Welles)
Message From Tthe Hills (Welles)
Traffic in Death (Johnstone)
Night Without End (Johnstone)
Appointment With Death (Johnstone)
Can the Dead Talk? (Johnstone)
Mansion of Madness (Johnstone)
The Shadow Returns (Johnstone)
The Sandhog Murders (Johnstone)
The Voice of Death (Johnstone)
Joey's Christmas Story (Johnstone)
The Shadow Challenged (Johnstone)
The Chess Club Murders (Johnstone)
The Ghost Walks Again (Johnstone)
The Case of the Three Frightened Policemen (Johnstone)
The Right of Light (Johnstone)
The Wailing Corpse (Johnstone)
The Gibbering Things (Morrison)
Death to the Shadow (Morrison)
Gang Doctor (Morrison)
The Devil Takes a Wife (Morrison)
The Scent of Death (Morrison)
Spider Boy (Morrison)
The Phantom of the Lighthouse (Morrison)
The Curse of the Gypsies (Morrison)
Murder and the Medium (Morrison)
The Chill of Death (Morrison)
Bones of the Dragon (Morrison)
Death and the Black Fedora (Morrison)
One Dead and Two to Go (Morrison)
Preview of Terror (Morrison)

Like I said, tapes are no longer widely available, even on Amazon, and CDs are expensive and have a weak storage capacity; MP3s seem to be the wave of the present. But this is a very respectable collection to have no matter how you get ahold of it.

I would have rated this at 5 stars had I not been shocked to the point of laughing in disbelief at the noise that was supposed to be the first episode of this collection. With out exageration there was NOT ONE SINGLE WORD of dialog one could make out. (this was even through a high-end Sony system with very high quality B&W speakers) Why even put this on the collection??!! Especially as the FIRST episode!?Every actor sounded as if they were being smother by a big THICK pillow. I don't think there was a single frequency above 600hz. Other tracks were fine and enjoyable (none were great sound quality, but that is to be expected). I just felt that tis was a deliberate rip off; how anyone think that this was anything more that 20 minutes of noise, maybe human, who knows..