More Shadow

 

 (mubi.com)

THE SHADOW: INVISIBLE AVENGER-1958-In New York, Lamont Cranston (Richard Derr; WHEN WORLD'S COLLIDE (1951)) visits New Orleans after receiving a phone call from his friend Tony (Steve Dano) just before he's stabbed to death. As The Shadow, Cranston makes himself nearly invisible, appearing only as a shadow with an echo voice and creepy laughter. He's accompanied by his kind of guru, Jogendra (Mark Daniels). The main plot is about a dictator who runs the fictitious South American country, Santa Cruz. There's a firing squad execution on the local nightly news and two brothers are on the opposite side of the military dictatorship. 

This embarrassingly cheap production started out as several episodes of a planned TV show featuring the mysterious crimefighter (created by Walter Gibson in 1931). Three directors are created including the great cinematographer James Wong Howe. Another is named Ben Parker. Some sources say this is the same guy who later directed the nutty TEENAGE STRANGLER (1964) but somehow, I doubt it.

Thanks for reading!

Johnny Sokko!

 

VOYAGE INTO SPACE-1970-Alien monster Lord Guillotine leads an invading force from the planet Gargoyle. On the high sea Johnny Sokko (Mitsunobu Kaneko) meets U3 (Akio Ito) an agent of Unicorn pretending to be writer Johnny Mano. Their ship is attacked by a giant sea monster. They make it to an island, totally dry, and pursued by members of The Gargoyle gang. The duo meet Dr. Guardian who is being forced to create a giant robot. He's killed helping the two escape. A bomb he planted blows up the evil headquarters but the giant robot survives and only obeys Johnny. Lord Guillotine sends the Dragulon (the underwater monster) to destroy Tokyo. Giant Robo (Toshiyuki Tsuchiyama) is victorious and Johnny joins Unicorn. Lord Guillotine has two weird henchmen, the silver skinned Dr. Botanus and the pegged legged Executioner. 

There's lots of crazy monsters and battles and funny dialogue but in the end the giant metallic hero sacrifices himself to save the Earth in a sad finale. 

This Japanese production was actually a TV show edited from first episode, 2 middle episodes and the last episode. Director Minoru Yamada went on to the “Kamen Rider” series and many other similar live action TV series.

Thanks for reading!