The Shadow of the Eagle (1932)

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

. . . of the director's cut for Erich Van Stroheim's GREED (which is the entire World Population alive Today), you'll swear that the 3 hours, 37 minutes of this "Mascot Serial" THE SHADOW OF THE EAGLE drags on for AT LEAST ten hours! SHADOW director Forde Beebe is so Hell-bent upon cramming every Bad Movie Cliché into SHADOW at least twice, you'll probably conclude that he's REALLY cousin Beebe Ford of THAT Ford Family. John Wayne drives home the SHADOW's message that corporate America is ALWAYS eager to short-change our heroic War Veterans (in this case, WWI pilot "Nate Gregory"). The Rich People Party gypped their winning team grunt soldiers who insured their ascendancy by triumphing in the War to End Lazy Southerners' Racist Slavery out of their full pensions. RPP President Hoover did worse, slaughtering a redacted number of WWI Vets seeking promised pensions, as well as their wives and kiddies ("Dead babies tell no tales," President Herb is said to have chuckled). Now the RPP's President-Elect Trump, who ducked service to America in Vietnam, plans to eliminate Veteran's Hospitals, throwing our current crop of Vets to the wolves. Who can save us? Now that John Wayne's gone over to the Dark Side, only the SHADOW knows.

While this is not John Wayne's finest movie, or even his finest serial, for fans of the cliffhanger it delivers plenty of action and pretty good acting.The main point of this review is to caution you about differences in the two DVD releases, both essentially from the same starting print. Decisions taken by the two different DVD production companies make all the difference in whether you enjoy this film or feel cheated. The two companies are Marengo Films and Platinum Disc. I first purchased the Marengo print and was so wholly unsatisfied with the editing and production that I went looking for another. I finally found it from a company named Platinum Discs.The Marengo release chops 5 seconds off the end of the film, leaving out completely John Wayne's closing scene. Also, the text that Marengo substituted for the studio's "The End" text is huge, blocky and computer generated. In short, Marengo has butchered the film for the sake of reducing the total number of VOBs needed to hold the DVD film image.The Platinum Disc release is the entire original film, not a single frame, more or less. My only disappointment with this version is they appear to have made no effort to clean up dust and scratches. The irony is that the Marengo print does have slightly more detail and better scratch and dust cleanup, however not enough, IMHO, to compensate for altering the original edit.Review written May 22, 2011 based on latest available releases from Marengo and Platinum.

Right up front, I'm not a big fan of the serial format. However when I saw a three DVD set of John Wayne's serials from the early 1930's, picking them up was a no brainer, especially for the price - under ten dollars. I watched "The Shadow Of The Eagle" today in a couple of sessions, and it was with a lot of patience and deliberation that I made it all the way through, no mean feat for the run time of 218 minutes. I say all that having now seen most of John Wayne's early Westerns from the Lone Star and Republic days; those movies run the gamut from poor to fairly entertaining given the era and Wayne's own early appearances in them. The serials predate those by at least a couple of years, so you can't fault The Duke himself for the product as much as the writing, directing and technology of an earlier time.Still, there's so much goofy stuff going on in 'Shadow' that it's easy to understand why they were shown in twenty minute sessions a week apart. The story involves Wayne's character Craig McCoy, who intervenes on behalf of carnival owner Nathan Gregory (Edward Hearn), a former World War I flier nicknamed 'The Eagle'. Presumed dead after being shot down in the war, five of his remaining buddies team up to form an aircraft company, reaping huge profits from an invention Gregory designed. The story follows McCoy's attempt to retrieve the original design plans, while a new 'Eagle' attempts to turn the former partners against each other, presumably to become the sole survivor and beneficiary of the lucrative invention.What's unique about the story is that the 'Eagle' uses a remote control airplane to sky write cryptic messages and warnings meant to intimidate the principals of the Evans Aero Corp. By the time it's all over, every member of the group has been fingered at least once as the primary villain. Not only that, but 'The Eagle' uses a pair of agents to further confound the plot by virtue of kidnapping, theft and other general mayhem. One of them is Wayne's long time collaborator, stunt man and buddy, Yakima Canutt, as an Eagle henchman named Boyle. This might be the only time you'll ever get to see Yak in a suit and tie! In addition to the standard cliffhanger endings for each chapter play, you also have Wayne engaging in fisticuffs with one villain or another in each segment. Sometimes he's aided by the carnival strongman (Ivan Linow), or as he's called by carny midget Billy (Little Billy Rhodes), the big palooka. Oddly, the carnival atmosphere doesn't figure much in the proceedings, although one of the chapter endings takes place on a ferris wheel, with McCoy about to fall to his demise. He makes the comeback the next time around with a trapeze like save.I should also mention that a pretty female was also at the center of the action most of the time, Colonel Gregory's daughter Jean (Dorothy Gulliver). In virtually every one of Wayne's early Westerns, the female lead wound up as a romantic interest for his character, but not here. I found that kind of odd actually, especially since he had twelve chances. One of the more exciting and innovative sequences involved Wayne and his co-star in a 'North by Northwest' style airplane chase to close out the first chapter, it made me wonder if Hitchcock might have seen it!So what was the goofiest scene in the movie? There's a sequence in Chapter Nine when Wayne's character and sidekick Henry, a ventriloquist (James Bradbury Jr.) take off in a car chase, and shortly into it, the Eagle's henchmen Moore and Boyle (Bud Osborne and Canutt) suddenly just appear on the vehicle in motion - how'd they do that? The movie was directed by Ford Beebe, whose name I've heard before, but I'm not familiar with his work, though it looks like he did a fair number of serials. Fortunately for John Wayne's career, he managed to hook up with another director named Ford starting with his 1939 break out film "Stagecoach". Wayne's overnight success came after roughly fifty movies!

Well what d'ya know? Just stumbled across this little caper which brings back happy memories of a childhood long long departed. The year was 1950 and I recall SHADOW OF THE EAGLE, the first time I ever clapped eyes on a very young up and coming John Wayne. (He had fully upped and comed by 1950!) Interestingly, this action-fest was considered somewhat of a "relic" even then!Shown as a weekly 20 minute serial at our local Saturday Morning Flicks...itself, the major regular event in our home town, I recall Wayne as square-jawed pilot Craig McCoy out to discover the truth behind the disappearance of a fairground owner whose livelihood had been threatened by the nefarious "Eagle." Each episode left a young boy barely able to wait for the following Saturday to catch Craig's latest revelations and discoveries in the dastardly plot. Actually, I can't ever recall the concluding episode.....maybe I had a sleepover the previous night? Maybe I'd finally cracked a date in her pedal-car with the five year old blonde tease next door, in which case poor old Duke was never a chance!