The Shadow: Biography According to the 1994 Movie

In the pulp magazines, Kent Allard is The Shadow and Lamont Cranston is The Shadow of the radio program.   In this article I will take a look at The Shadow's biography according to the 1994 Shadow movie which starred Alec Baldwin.

Much of what we know of The Shadow we learn in the first few minutes of the movie and in conversations with other characters throughout the film.  We find that a man named Lamont Cranston is living in Tibet and is known as the notorious drug lord Ying Ko and "The Butcher of Llasa."  He is a heartless man with no qualms about killing anyone.  We learn that Lamont Cranston had fought in World War I and after the war had gone missing for 7 years.    Those missing seven years were spent traveling the world and eventually settling in Tibet as an opium dealer.  

Lamont Cranston is kidnapped by a Tibetan holy man, a Tulku, who not only knows Cranston's real name, but knows the depth of the blackness in his heart.  The Tulku offers Lamont redemption for his evil ways, and ultimately Lamont accepts it.  The Tulku tells Cranston, "I also know that for as long as you can remember, you struggled against your own black heart and always lost. You watched your spirit, your very face change as the beast claws its way out from within you. You are in great pain, aren't you?  You know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, for you have seen that evil in your own...I will teach you to use your black shadow to fight evil."

In the move, we are told on the screen, "The price of redemption for Cranston was to take up man's struggle against evil.  The Tulku taught him to cloud men's minds, to fog their vision through the force of concentration, leaving visible the only thing he can never hide..his Shadow.  Thus armed, Cranston returned to his homeland..."  Cranston returns to New York City where we further learn that he is a man of great wealth and social status.

The Shadow's abilities in the movie are similar to what he has in both the pulp magazines and the radio show.  He is a master of hand-to-hand combat, a marksman with weapons, and has great psychic abilities.  His psychic abilities allow him to cloud men's minds so as to be invisible, he can read minds, hypnotize people, and has the power of telekinesis.

Alec Baldwin as The Shadow

I noted a couple of things I saw in the movie that fans may have overlooked.  First, when Lamont Cranston sees the Tulku's monastary, it is in the shape of a cobra.  I think this ties in with the radio episode of "The Temple Bells of Neban" where it's disclosed that The Shadow learned his mystic powers from a yogi who was the keeper of the Temple of the Cobras.  Second, it seems like Cranston transforms into The Shadow and this is similar to how it is described in the Belmont books series of The Shadow.  There are a few other 'Easter eggs' in the movie for Shadow fans and I'll try to write about them at a later date.

According to the 1994 movie, The Shadow is Lamont Cranston, a wealthy young man who is a WWI veteran and redeemed drug lord that uses his great powers and abilities to fight the forces of evil!

Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston