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Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Winters’

The Shadow (30th anniversary revisit)

Tuesday, July 9th, 2024

July 1st, 1994

THE SHADOW is another weird 1994 would-be blockbuster that I previously wrote about in my 2017 series Summer Flings, and I will point you to that review for a more thorough accounting of its plot, merchandising and promotion. But it’s a movie I’m pretty fond of and it’s at least trying to be one of the more traditional popcorn movies of the summer so I wanted to revisit it and discuss it in the context of this retrospective.

You know, when I look at it now the math kinda makes sense. Old pulp super hero + the period when studios were trying to recreate the magic of BATMAN 1989 + Russell Mulcahy, the pioneering music video director who gave us HIGHLANDER and HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING = this movie. It has all kinds of the old timey concepts and tone that I enjoy, it’s filmed with enthusiastic style and energy, it also has a bit of a craziness that’s appealing to me but maybe a turn off for the kind of wide audience they were obviously hoping for. It’s not as wild or messy as THE QUICKENING but it has enough of that that it’s not surprising it didn’t catch on. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Comic strips/Super heroes | 46 Comments »

The Shadow

Wednesday, July 5th, 2017

a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on

(NOTE: I’ve decided to go back to cover two Summer Flings that I regret having skipped.)

July 1, 1994

Look, I can’t say for sure what audiences were yearning for in the summer of ’94, but it might have been a cartoon about lions and it might not have been a super hero movie set in the 1930s, based on a character from serialized radio dramas. Here is yet another entry in my beloved genre of old-timey-super-hero-movie-that-totally-failed-at-the-box-office-but-I-thought-it-was-pretty-good. I suppose THE SHADOW seemed like a more sensible bet than some of them, because it was at least a character with vague name recognition and noir influences like BATMAN (in fact some believe the first Batman story was a rip-off of a Shadow story called “Partners of Peril”).

At first glance The Shadow (Alec Baldwin, THE GETAWAY) does seem like kind of a Batman-esque character. He’s a rich handsome guy named Lamont Cranston who lives a secret life, going out at night as a scary figure, fighting criminals. He doesn’t have a cape, but a black cloak that serves the same purpose, plus a hat and a mask over the mouth and two guns. And hidden in an alley is the entrance to his Batcave-like secret base. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 41 Comments »

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