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5.5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Shadow of the Eagle remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have any love for cheap, dusty old cliffhanger serials, The Shadow of the Eagle is absolutely worth an afternoon of your life. But if you cannot stand repetitive plots, crackly audio, and people punching each other for twelve chapters straight, you will probably want to throw your screen out the window. ✈️
The whole thing kicks off with a villain who calls himself "The Eagle" writing threats in the sky to scare a big corporation. It is honestly the most inconvenient way to blackmail a company ever put on film.
A very young, baby-faced John Wayne plays Craig McCoy, a stunt pilot who spends most of his screen time looking handsome but incredibly confused. This was way before his iconic cowboy drawl fully cooked, so he sounds like a regular, slightly nervous kid from California.
The plot mostly takes place around a traveling carnival owned by an old guy named Nathan Gregory. Everyone thinks Gregory is the villain because he has an old grudge, and then he suddenly vanishes into thin air.
The main reason to watch this is the sheer, unhinged energy of the stunts. There were clearly zero safety regulations in 1932, and you can feel the genuine danger every time a car chases a biplane down a bumpy dirt road.
If you have ever dug into other rough-around-the-edges curiosities of this era, like the early talkie drama Shanghai Rose, you will know exactly what kind of charmingly clunky acting to expect here. Sometimes a scene starts and you can literally see the actors waiting for the director to shout "action" before they start moving.
My favorite moment involves a car chase where the vehicles look like they are going maybe twenty miles per hour. Yet, the music is blaring so loud you would think they were racing through a burning building.
The heroine, played by Dorothy Gulliver, is surprisingly spunky for a 1930s damsel, even if she does get kidnapped about six different times. By the time you get to chapter ten, the plot has looped so many times that you will completely forget who is mad at who.
"You can almost feel the filmmakers making up the plot as they went, hoping the audience wouldn't notice the gaps between weekly theater visits."
It is not a masterpiece, and the resolution of who "The Eagle" actually is feels like a total cheat. But for a piece of pure, silly cinematic history, it is a hell of a lot of fun. 🦅
IMDb 5.1
1929
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