Action and sleuthing take a back seat to the lousy comic relief in this in-and-out Monogram Pictures B-movie based on The Shadow radio series and pulp fiction stories. Chiseled action star Kane Richmond is Lamont Cranston, a cheerful society gent by day who dons a mask and a black suit to fight crime as The Shadow by night. Here, he’s on the trail of a Shadow impersonator who murders a scuzzy blackmailer. However, the bad guy gives him a lot less trouble than his nagging fiancee and dopey sidekick butler. This is unremarkable overall, though the weird organ music that clumsily starts up when Cranston dons his Shadow garb is kinda cool.
It’s an early credit for notable noir director Phil Karlson with an uncredited William Beaudine hired in the middle of the shoot to take over the film when Karlson became ill with food poisoning.