"The Tomb of Terror" (Aug 28, 1938)

We can't have Halloween without some ol' classic mummy curse, right? ;) That's why the choice for this Pulp Sunday was an easy one, even if, as we will discover, the supernatural has a very little play in this case.

An entire Egyptian tomb is taken to the Museum of Natural Hystory where a large crowd is ready to visit the exceptional archeological discovery. Three men of the expedition crew enter the tomb to inspect it and all 3 die soon after. Is it a curse, or something more "material" is behind it? The Shadow knows ;)

Little trivia: this episode is sponsored not by the famous Blue Coal but by a brand of tires. The Shadow himself is usesd as testimonial in the commercial.

Enjoy the epsiode, have a Pulp Sunday and, most of all, a Happy Halloween everyone!

Francesco

Download from the Internet Archive

"Gun Island" (Oct 23, 1938)

While on a cruise in the Caribbeans, the yacht Lamont and Margot are travelling on gets hijacked and taken to a near, secret island. Here, the Shadow will discover that these are not the usual pirates but part of something that can affect the "National security".

Interesting to see how the Shadow uses a captive Margot to get informations out of the "pirate" capitain and funny to see the capitain falling for some simple trick about his ego to give away precious infos ;)

Enjoy the epsiode and have a Pulp Sunday!

Francesco

Download from the Internet Archive

"Murders in Wax" (Jul 24, 1938)

After the poison and the sniper episodes of last week, here's another tale of revenge and murders. In this case the list of victims is full of main politics figures, which will lead the Shadow to find out who is the brain behind the "killing hand". The settings of the wax museum gives to the story a nice horror vibe (who can't forget the many wax museum movies with Vincent Price?) and I almost wish the story would have been even more in that direction. Enjoyable nonetheless so listen to the episode by clicking on the link below.

Enjoy the show and have a great (pulp) Sunday!

Francesco

Download from the Internet Archive

"The Laughing Corpse" (Mar 10, 1940)

"You Will Laugh but not from Joy, You Will Laugh and the Laugh Will Be the Laugh of Death"
This note is the one-way ticket to the land of the dead for those unfortunate victims of this week episode of the Shadow. Once again, we are dealing with a scientist gone mad (or bad - most of the times it's both). Revenge is what is pushing the killer in developing a poison that leaves the victims with a big "grin" on their faces (the chemical affects some of the facial muscles, as it is explained by The Shadow).

It's interesting how this Modus Operandi is the same adopted for the Joker in the Batman stories (which will debut later that year). We can't really tell for sure if Batman creators were inspired by this episode, but killing people by making them "laughing" to death is not a very common cause of death, not even in today world ;)

Enjoy the show and have a great (pulp) Sunday!

Francesco

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