Invisible Avenger 1958

Now that I’ve caught up with the MCU movies, I decided that I wanted to watch something a little more random before catching up with either the Sony Marvel movies or the DC movies so I went back to the beginning of my giant, chronological list of superhero and comic book movies and wanted to watch the Missing Lady, but when searching on where to watch it, nothing that came up was a free streamer, so I went down to the next one which was available to watch for free on Tubi, and it was only a 60 minute movie which was a plus. Like many Marvel movies in the 70’s and 80’s, this was actually created as two pilot episodes for a Shadow TV series before editing them together to form a movie. And as far as I can tell, this was produced during a dry spell for Shadow content as the Radio drama ended in 1954, the comic strip in 1949, and the last film was back in 1946. This is notable for including his ability to become a literal shadow as taken from the radio drama which makes this the first Shadow movie to be much closer to a superhero movie. As for the actual content of the film, it feels like a typical low budget noir drama with nothing too complicated in terms of plot and fight scenes that consist of a couple weak punches, there were a couple killings though one was off camera and none of them had any blood.

The basic plot of the movie is that there are twin brothers from a fictional country called Santa Cruz, one is the the true Presidente hiding out in New Orleans, the other is playing at second in command for Generalissimo who has taken over Santa Cruz. The Presidente is being watched while he is trying to make plans to take back his country, he stupidly talks with a jazz musician who knows Lamont Cranston out in the middle of a club about gaining his help. The musician is killed while on the phone with Lamont who makes a trip to New Orleans to investigate the entire situation and ends up helping out Presidente and his daughter in the process. There’s a crooked cabbie, the henchman bouncer, and the club owner all in on the killing while Cranston and his mentor basically take it all in stride.

Richard Derr plays Lamont Cranston slash the Shadow and he does a decent job at it. He doesn’t really have a strong personality and never really feels like he’s in danger. He’s always basically playing it off smoothly, but a little too smoothly in places where you don’t ever really get a sense that he’s in danger. He’s also joined by his mentor Jogendra, someone who hasn’t been a character in any of the other Shadow movies. Here, he’s the one who teaches Cranston his mystical abilities to become a literal shadow, hypnotize people, and speak telepathically. At this point in the story, Cranston hasn’t fully mastered the telepathic abilities, but does turn into a shadow at several points in the movie. Jogendra does point out that the more often he uses his abilities, the more likely that someone will make the connection between Cranston and the Shadow, but in this movie it’s not clear whether the people he literally disappears right in front of are even aware of the Shadow as something that exists, or are just idiots who see Lamont turn into a shadow right in front of them, but not think that maybe he is the Shadow.

The visuals are not much to speak of, when it is used, the shadow effect looks good for the era. The fight scenes were all pretty short and uninteresting, and there were several scenes that were just way too dark even for a noir movie. It was just difficult to see anything. The jazz club was an ok location and the conversations with a couple of the musicians felt a little silly either due to their poor attempt at using the jazz language of the time, or just that the slang is really outdated at this point in time talking about how Lamont is a square who’s actually hip, and it’s never really clear if he’s actually a fan of jazz music or if he just tolerates it because of his investigation. There were a couple twists and turns in the narrative where near the end, the Presidente sees news footage of his brother getting executed, and yet the brother shows up on their boat as they travelled to Santa Cruz. The Shadow also uses his powers to disappear and create a friendly fire situation where the brother takes out his own henchman while trying to shoot the Shadow. All in all, this was a pretty harmless diversion to spend an hour but it’s not really something worth going back to or seeking out unless you’re really curious. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.