THE SHADOW

UK, 1933, 63 minutes, Black and white.
Henry Kendall, Felix Aylmer, Elizabeth Allen, Cyril Raymond, Ralph Truman.
Directed by George A. Cooper.

This is a British film, not related to the American version of the crime detector, radio personality in many films, The Shadow.

Instead, the film opens with a number of suicides of prominent people, being blackmailed by an unknown hat and cloak character. Scotland Yard is investigating, under the supervision of Sir Henry Bryant (Felix Aylmer in an early role). One of his chief investigators almost captures The Shadow but is killed. He is played by Ralph Truman, to be a character actor in British films over the coming decades.

The action goes to Sir Henry’s country estate, a focus on his daughter, played by Elizabeth Allen, her eccentric and self-centred aunt, Sir Henry’s secretary, a number of police, infiltration by a mysterious man and his wife, turning out to be a famous jewel thief having escaped from Dartmoor, and, distracting audiences with PG Wodehouse kind of silly-ass humour and puns, Henry Kendall as a guest, a writer of crime novels, looking for clues everywhere, getting in the way, tiring everyone all the time.

The Shadow is in the house, fires shots at various people, another inspector being killed.

The audience will have many his suspicions – but it does turn out to be the silly-ass who uses that is a cover for his blackmailing attempts.

The film works reasonably well as a murder mystery, as a focus on British class and differences, police investigations – and the unmasking of a seemingly unlikely villain.