Review of The Shadow Laughs

This is an early sound film with tons of talking, attempts at humor and what could be generously called uneven acting. The plot has something to do with a bank robbery and murder being investigated by the police and by some newspapermen. There are no shadows, no laughing and just boredom.

Fifteen minutes or so of what is suppose to pass for pithy dialog I hit the fast forward button to get to the end. I was hoping that at some point it was going to start making sense, it never did, they just kept talking endlessly while throwing characters and situations into the mix. I really can't say much more beyond that since by the end, I had no idea what was going on, even with stopping to see what the latest twist was.

I do have to admit that a good chunk of the problem comes from when this film was made, which is the early days of sound. In those days poverty row producers would just crank out anything with sound because people would go see anything that talked, it also resulted in many stagnant scenes (which this movie is full of) because no one could move very far from the microphones.. They also had to fill the slots on their bookings so lots of crap was churned out. This is one of the turkeys.

This is one to avoid.