This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Welcome to this final
special episode of Red Panda Report where I am talking a bunch about the
Shadow before I talk about the Red Panda because the marvelous mass mystery man
is inspired by, chiefly I believe, the Shadow himself who is Lamont Cranston
young man about town, or wealthy young man about town, who with the assistance
of his partner and friend Margot Lane stopped a bunch of crimes as the Shadow.
She was the only one who knew his identity and you will find out as we
start going through the Red Panda soon that there's only one person who knows the
identity of the Red Panda. But that's for another day. Today we're going to
talk about a very different iteration of the Shadow, a very modern iteration of
the Shadow, being the 1994, I know that's almost 30 years ago, but the 1994 movie
adaptation of the Shadow which does an interesting blend of the novels and the
radio shows to build its own unique Shadow mythos. I read a very interesting
review of this from a major Shadow fan, which I think I should put in the
show notes, that this was supposed to be the start of, you know, the Shadow
cinematic universe and which it's not actually the very first Shadow movie and
there was Shadow on TV but I don't know if those were made for TV movies or TV
specials, what are they called? Miniseries or anything like that. So anyway this is,
I'm not saying it's the unique film but it's the only film I'm watching and
talking about so here we are folks let's go ahead and let's go ahead and do this.
So I didn't actually take the time to make notes. The only thing I want to take
special note of is I remember the Shadow. I don't know if I've talked about this yet.
I remember the Shadow because down in my area of Southern California there was an
AD plumbing company and there was a little old man bald, would probably be
spectacled as well, who I imagine is old enough that he heard the Shadow episodes
brought to you by Blue Cole. Call your Blue Cole dealer. And he liked it as a
kid and then when he became a businessman he said hey I'm gonna do TV
and radio commercials for my plumbing business that's named after me. So it
would go something along the lines of who knows what darkness lurks in the
heart of your plumbing. ADDOO! And not only did I hear that ridiculously played
on the radio but my grandfather who was a small business owner and a AM radio
advocate or avid listener at least to some select programs that we don't need
to discuss right now, he heard that commercial and he would do it and he
would make fun of it and you know mock it or repeat it or whatever and it's
it's less making fun and mocking it's just it's funny. ADDOO! And I don't
remember if he told me because I said grandpa what's this? And he said oh it's
the Shadow, it was this little thing, it said who knows who you know what evil
looks in the hearts of men the Shadow does but instead it's ADDOO because
this guy's advertising for his business. But anyway it's just it's funny because
the commercial aspect of the Shadow is something that I find
delightful and it really tickles me. The blue coal ads are funny. In like while
I'm waiting impatiently for myself to do this review I've been listening to the
the original goofy universe of the Red Panda Adventures or the Red Panda which
there's six episodes of those which again you can find at DakotaRinkTheatre.com
and those are just funny and they have stuff like you know nutrient
flakes that are being advertised in the show and they have ad reads that are
going and like the narrator gets whacked by somebody because he's reading the
narration for the he's reading the ad the ad copy during the show and you know
they want the the you know the characters in the show it's it's making
fun of itself and the genre or not the genre but like the medium you know they're
like you hear them like whacking him and he's like he gets hit multiple times he
goes from one ad to the next he's like all right back to the show and then it
continues but the commercial aspects of the shadow are interesting because like
at the end of the seasons they would say you know if you want to see this show
continue call up your you know make sure you plot you buy plenty of blue coal or
call up your local blue cave blue coal dealer and tell them that you loved
hearing these shadow programs which of course contain more advertising for the
blue coal company and America's number one anthracite I've only listened to like
I've listened to maybe I'll just call like 15 vintage shadow episodes but that
that's stuck in my head now our our anthracite is colored blue at the
factory in a very safe way so that you can identify our coal by sight it's the
cleanest and the best well-burning and this coal was engineered specifically or
no the heaters and stoves were engineered specifically to burn well
with this coal it's just it's unbelievable how blatant and and open
and unabashed they were with the marketing of these things but honestly
you know it's funny because a hundred years later almost a hundred years later
that's what marketing is now you know I'm an aspiring author and part of the
reason I'm so tempted to go indie is because the publishing if you are
published by one of the big was it for now maybe it's before anyway if you want
to be trad pub you still have to do shows and maybe travel do book signings
do all sorts of things that I don't want to have to do and the the way and they
should I'm sure they're gonna be moving to print on demand and not just printing
you know scads of books that aren't potentially gonna sell because it's just
a more efficient business model but like there's a lot of things that don't make
sense but anyway regardless my point is you have to do the same type of
marketing and hustle for your books to sell if you're an indie publisher or if
you're a self published or if you're if you're traditionally published so why
not go in and then have all the freedom and creative control that you want sure
you're putting yourself out on the line but that's what you do when you believe
in yourself and when you believe in what you're doing or a product you're selling
you're willing to take those risks in order to make it happen and maybe you
find a little audience and it works for you or maybe you find a huge audience it
doesn't matter but the shadow would put himself out there and that's what I'm
planning to do too but anyway sorry I just had to do that oh and also my
grandfather would also tell me and he wouldn't just say this to me but I heard
it a lot enough so it sticks it sticks in my mind too not a good idea pop and
the shadow in this movie Alec Baldwin delivers this line that's not a good
idea and then he does something you know beat somebody up or whatever and I just
when I heard that this like the shadow I will always link with my grandfather
because of those ade do commercials and I believe he actually took us to go see
this in the theater and he wasn't like a massive he was a very he was a fun guy
and the things that he jammed to more were like music he had records and stuff
that he would play and he really liked certain people but as far as movies he'd
go see like the big blockbusters and the spectacles I think this was supposed to
be that in 94 and it it wasn't you know kind of flopped but another one of his
favorite things to say was ridiculous and I'm sure more than once he yelled or
proclaimed ridiculous while we were watching this movie and yeah that was
his opinion and mine is that it's pretty darn cool so it's different tastes and
different you know different tastes for different people but I think we both
agree that the old radio shows are cool and that the books are even cooler so
anyway with that preface and a little homage to my grandfather who's been
passed for some time now I just you know I'm ready to jump into the actual the
actual discussion of this and I want to discuss the things I didn't like the
things I did like and some other things just kind of extraneous and you know
this is tangentially related to the red panda so I'm kind of feeling even more
comfortable being a little more casual with it and I don't think there's
anything wrong with that so anyway yeah I'll just go I'll go right into it I
don't have that much and there's actually not a ton to talk about it's an
interesting movie they did some interesting thing with this things with
the special effects to make the shadow invisible let me roll back though real
quick I do feel like probably one of the biggest problems with the movie is that
it works better if you know the material better and that is to say I had not read
or listened to rather the audiobooks a few audiobooks worth of the shadow until
after I had watched this movie for the second time a few months ago so again I
saw it almost 30 years ago and then I saw it like four or five months ago and
then I just because I was playing around with doing this this whole red panda
report thing at the time and then I just finally decided to go ahead and do it so
now we're doing it and I in the meantime I listened to a couple shadow novels
because I do want to pull in that pulp pulpy goodness and put it in my stuff my
own writing and I thought well I should listen to this good you know solid source
material Taylor liked it you know lots of other people liked shadow this is
like classic you do there are 300 books for a reason you know and anyway so I
decided to check those out and then when I came back to this movie after that I
thought oh there's that there's that there's that there's all these cool
things that if you know the lore of the shadow if you've been a shadow fan it
pops and it feels like oh this is it's kind of like coming home you know it has
a feeling of nostalgia and I didn't get that you know watching a few months ago
but so that's a problem it doesn't really maybe it's not a problem maybe
it's actually a strength of it that it feels like it can stand on its own it
can include these elements without telling you that's from the book or
that's from the radio show because margaret lane herself is from the radio
show as far as I know she never appears in the books although there is a
reference in the like fifth or sixth book to the weekly radio broadcast that
the shadow has been doing for years now and no one knows if that's the actual
shadow or if it's somebody else or what it is and I like the idea that Gibson
included that in his books and that's like some sort of like almost like a
Psy-op that the the shadow does on the criminal underworld that he's fighting
and anybody else really but it very well could just be the the radio show hosted
by blue coal which is fun and you could even have a world where the shadow was
real and somebody decided to make a you know radio show about it working off of
the fame of this urban legend like that's actually that's actually really
cool idea but anyway of course if that was made today that would end up with
somebody going in I guess it'd be like the Grey Ghost episode of Batman the
animated series where you have somebody going and rescuing the you know the fake
shadow from you know a real threat but anyway which actually they kind of did
something like that in red panda was it red incense I'm getting away off track
but yeah so I felt like it was a little weak in some ways in that it almost
seemed like it depended on upon you knowing and liking the serials well the
serials are the books which you shouldn't have to do I also thought it
was odd like I was very shocked by the yin-ko introduction the cold open with
yin-ko this drug kingpin who turns out to be played by Alec Baldwin and he's
got these long nasty purple nails and it's just it's kind of weird because it
goes from that to him being forced into a redemption by the I know the Toku the
to ko I can't remember the holy man who has a big shrine and who has the master
who has mastered the powers of the mind and who teaches this stuff to the shadow
to law on Cranston and then to I guess to oh man what's his name to con I'll
just say con because that's all I know John Lowe that's who the actor but he's
made him into a shadow type person as well and I don't know if it's because he
was trying to reform him as a barbarian and make him a second agent of himself
which is that's actually interesting that the the Toku or the to ko whatever
to coup the to ko that sounds right the to ko interestingly enough in the movies
plays a similar role to the shadow where he implements agents around the world
doing what he taught them to do for the betterment of mankind but obviously it
went wrong when con turned against him and murdered him and went on this quest
for world domination yeah and like his characterization is a little weak and
his motivation other than he's kind of a you know mad man who wants to take over
the world is a little weak because they don't talk about his I came of and it's
not Shangri-La but like there's like a secret underground like special society
of Mongols basically of people for you know people like getting this con and
his fellow Mongols and their idea is there like the germ of it is there but I
know that because of the Golden Master which actually contains that idea so
there was a little bit of a weakness in the script that he just it made things
unclear and they made certain choices and decisions for the story to make it
you know such without actually doing all the work themselves in the script
writing like it could have been a much more simple story it didn't need to be
this con story it didn't need to be and I think there's a little bit of a
weakness to the narrative that you're introducing the shadow and already from
movie one he's facing a character who has powers similar to his own but
greater than his own and I would think that that makes it more difficult for us
to understand what his powers actually are because we don't get them fully
explained but that maybe they wanted to use contrast between con and Cranston to
show what each of them can do to show the the extent of their powers it's funny
because it's kind of like Batman Begins is like a like much better version of
this movie because you have the guy in you know vague Asian country being
trade trained by a mysterious master and then another pupil of or you know
whatever equivalent of the master comes at him in his hometown with his own
technology with something massive that will destroy the city and that's I don't
know I guess it's just a simple story I'm not accusing Nolan or anybody who
worked on Batman Begins of stealing the idea but like you know a superior
version of this is Batman Begins ironically in the history of the shadow
which I've mentioned or alluded to before Batman the first issue of Batman I
believe it was actually stole a stole a bunch of stuff ideas and and setting and
all sorts of stuff from a shadow story eight some ace chemicals I think is what
it was anyway so that's interesting but yeah like I said there's a little bit of
a weakness of the story but that kind of doesn't matter because it's really
exciting and really fun to see the shadow brought to life on the big screen
for me this way and there's a lot of cool things that they do with the shadow
like you know using his agents which I think is a wonderful idea they show him
saving something in the beginning of the movie and that man is drafted in to the
shadows army and he gets this you know special glowing ring and he gets these
you know code words to say and then Cranston himself appears to the man
later as a fellow agent of the shadow now he lets the man assume that he says
one of them you know because he tells one of my agents will contact you and
then he himself is Cranston goes and contacts the man he's like oh you're an
agent of the shadow aren't you and he's like who he's like oh that's right
because you know it's all subterfuge and spy type stuff and that's really fun
and it's it's interesting because you get to see this guy in like his normal
life like having dinner with his wife or just having a conversation they're
listening to the radio at breakfast and he gets the call from Cranston and he
goes with him and they do you know whatever shadow ops type stuff hey
that's right and then later you see Mo Moshe Shreve doing something similar and
his wife says what is that is it another thing from the bowling league the bowling
club and he's like yeah it is so it's kind of funny it's kind of coin it's
kind of cute this idea you had these men like an ordinary you know overweight
chubby no six-pack whatever just like ordinary guys you know the the Asian
guys are like a metal or just or something like that and he helps examine
a coin for Cranston to figure out you know what is going on and you know who
this threat is and then Shreve is just a just you know just your average Joe a
schlub if you will and he is doing great things in this other life that you know
he hides from his wife or whatever and it's just I know it's a really
interesting idea really interesting dynamic it's very exciting to think that
these ordinary men can be living such extraordinary lives and doing such
amazing things that lead to them saving people's lives I mean Shreve was
instrumental in saving I can't remember the scientist guy's name but he was
instrumental in saving him because he was there you know driving around
Cranston you know helping the shadow do his thing and that's a really neat idea
and there's something very noble to that and I don't know kind of beautiful
about the it's like secret society of you know ordinary men doing good things
because they can and because they have another man leading them to do these
great things which is interesting when you contrast what yin-ko was what
Lamont Cranston was as this drug you know kingpin crime lord guy he was happy
to murder people he he was happy to murder people and in fact we get to see
flashbacks of him later in the movie through the use of you know margolain as
an expository device sort of in her psychic connection to him where we see
her reaching into his memories as he's I guess into his nightmares as he's
having memories of his past life as as a barbarian where he's attacking and
killing people in a village to I would assume solidify his power and it was all
for selfish gain and he was a leader of men commander of armies in the past but
to great evil and for his own selfish gain and now he's doing it thanks to
this redemption that was forced upon him for the good of people and yet he's
filling a similar role it's just he's directing it you know positive life
giving generative ways opposed to selfish destructive way anyway I got a
little carried off talking about the beauty and wonderment of superhero
fiction and redemption which are things I'm obsessed by or obsessed with but
they did some really cool stuff with him becoming invisible like his footsteps
showing in up in water and you know that's how a bad guy was able to see him
and that was really cool because you know he would have certain tells he
would have certain tells like that to his you know physically being there
despite the fact that he's invisible and that's you know that's clever it's a
clever idea to explore and something to show and the animated shadows that they
did like on walls or going yeah going up walls are going upstairs different
things like that were really delightful to see I love you know traditional 2d
you know hand-painted animation on you know film cells and gets how they did it
at the time I absolutely love that and there's no reason you couldn't do that
with digital with digital work now you could still I think do you know digital
painting of something on and then you know put that onto something that was
filmed digitally as well so I definitely it's possible and it's something I'd
like to see like for example I love the lightning effects of like Palpatine's
electricity from well return to the Jedi and then when they did it in the prequel
trilogy it was less wonderful than it was back then also the lightning effects
and Ghostbusters and things like that so I love that practical 2d effect it looks
a little cartoonish but it's very expressive the shadow silhouette flat on
the wall was very expressive and did some very interesting things and like
when he was tormenting I want to call him Tim Robbins but that's not his name
the guy from Rocky Horror Picture Show that guy when he was tormenting him
before that guy died that was pretty cool to see the way he was affecting the shadow
moving around the room and oh there was another thing so I was trying to think
of all the I love his transformation into the figure of the shadow because he
loses his Alec Baldwin looks I find it odd that they didn't give him green eyes like
that sign has and said they gave him these like black eyes which is cool but
the prosthetics that they put him in to change the shape of his face and give
him that you know that big nose that you know aqualine nose I think is what they
call the you know like an eagle beak nose and some of the other flourishes
that they did to make the shadow like the big bushy eyebrows and stuff like to
make him look like the guy on the book on the book covers was really cool and I
absolutely love it I think it's a brilliant move and I really like I think
Alec Baldwin he's not like the most attractive man ever but he's a good
looking guy and like the shadow you know that face is less classically handsome
so having him transform and kind of become ugly as the shadow as he's this
you know weird predatory creature of the night stalking evil is interesting
because there's this line in the movie about his own dark heart his own black
heart like he knows what darkness lurks in the hearts of men because that
darkness lurks you know his heart has been had been consumed or subsumed in
that darkness as well and almost like to me an idea like the portrait of Dorian
Gray where the picture becomes ugly that as he becomes the shadow like all that
darkness comes to the surface and it makes him hideous and while he's hideous
he is at his most monstrously powerful hold on and that's when he's able to
unleash all these powers and I just think that's really cool oh one more
aesthetic thing I loved is when he would do a hypnotism or a mind control on
somebody where they would either they would cause shadows to go everywhere but
his eyes or they would just brighten his eyes I think it was almost always
shadows over his eyes or shadows on either side of his eyes you know above
him below and that was a really great effect the only place I ever remember
seeing that before was like an Addams Family when the woman would try to be a
luring to her husband or like you know mysterious shots and it's been long it's
been decades since I've seen the Addams Family movies the live-action ones I'm
talking about from the 90s Gomez and not Elvira that's the other lady mistress of
the night or whatever but anyway that's an old technique from black and white
films I believe and it was used to great effect here and you can do it in full
color which was kind of interesting to see so there's a lot of cool interesting
visual flourishes watching the pneumatic tube traveling like you're traveling
through them through the pneumatic tube pipe as that message is being delivered
from the Jonas building or from the beat Jonas office I was super cool very
delightful there was just a lot of interesting visual flourishes a lot of
interesting things going on but just wasn't wasn't quite all it could have
been there was one more thing I want to bring up for my notes which is oh yeah
gadgets so Khan wasn't the best villain and I already talked about that a little
bit but just real quick the pneumatic male tubes were really cool to see the
fact that he has early computers in his shadow sanctum the glowing rings I don't
know if that's supposed to be technological or mystical or magical
somehow but that was you know neat and then he's got a when Khan invades his
sanctum he backs himself up to a wall Lamont does and he hits a like a molding
so that a gun will pop out a loaded gun so he can try to shoot him but he's
already gone by that point um let me see I talked about his mythos Lamont Cranston
so this is about lore stuff Lamont Cranston is the shadow but he wasn't
always he was a drug lord I talked about that already it's funny that his uncle's
the police commissioner that's odd Cranston was forcibly redeemed turned to
a fighter of evil I talked about that and he seems to have telepathic
coercion or hypnosis power that I'm unaware from the books or the show which
is kind of interesting but anyway that's just rounding me out and making sure I
say everything I wanted to say but I'm gonna have to cut this short for now I
went longer much longer than I thought I was going to and here we go I bid you a
due next time I will be talking about the riddle of the Sphinx which is the
very first episode of the red panda I hope you enjoyed that go to MJmunoz.com
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there you can find all of my analysis art and fiction I cover books Tokusatsu
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