The Shadow battles a villain known as The Black Tiger, who has the power to make himself invisible and is attempting domination of major financial and business concerns. Victor Jory's Shadow is faithful to the radio character, especially the radio show's signature: the sinister chuckle of the invisible Shadow as he confronts a villain. Columbia, however, relied on fistfights, chases, and headlong action in its serials, and disliked the prospect of a 15-chapter adventure where the audience wouldn't see much of the heroics, because the leading character was supposed to be invisible. By basing the serial character more on the pulp fiction version and turning the mysterious Shadow into a flesh-and-blood figure, plainly visible in hat and cloak, Columbia patterned the serial after its wildly successful serial of 1938, The Spider's Web, itself based on a masked hero of pulp fiction. The Spider was the respectable Richard Wentworth, who terrorized the underworld as the mysterious Spider and infiltrated gangland under a third identity, small-time crook Blinky McQuade. Columbia copied the triple-role format for The Shadow, with the stalwart Lamont Cranston baffling the enemies of justice as The Shadow and moving among them as Oriental confederate Lin Chang.
The Shadow was released on 1 June 1940, Veda Ann Borg's 25th birthday.
Critical reception
Opinion on the serial, especially as an adaptation on the pulp magazine source material, is mixed. Harmon and Glut are critical of the serial. Filming The Shadow in brightly lit environments undermines the mystery and menace of the character. The quality of the plotting is also brought into question for its lack of imagination and the fact that the hero appears to survive cliffhangers and threats for no reason other than that he is the hero. On the other hand, Cline praises the serial. The mystery of the pulp magazine was preserved in the serial by both the hero and villain being masked. This lent an ambiguity from the point of view of the other characters that also pervaded the source material, so "for the audience the result was perfectly compatible and a pure delight."
