"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

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"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

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"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

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"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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"Silent Avenger" (Mar 13, 1938)

After the outdoor/country and exotic tones of the last two episodes, we are back in the cement jungle made of crowded streets, high buildings, and perfect shooting sites for a... sniper!!! When a convict is sentenced to the deathrow, he asks to his brother - a shell-shocked war sniper - to avenge him by killing the people who are responsible for his execution. Bodies start to fall under the precise shots of the sniper. Can the Shadow stop him before the killer accomplishes his deathly list?.

Shell-shocked war veterans who turn in killer has been the subject for many "recent" famous movies (Taxi Driver comes to mind) and have been, sadly, also on the real news not too long ago. So it's interesting to see that it was a subject for stories also back in the '30s.
Enjoy the show and have a great (pulp) Sunday!

Francesco

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"The Temple Bells of Neban" (Oct 24, 1937)

Beautiful exotic dancers, snake charmers, ancient Indian Mysticism, deadly cobras, telepathy: this episode has them all!
We get chance to glimpse at The Shadow's past as he finally meets someone who has been trained in the remote and mysterious area of India where he learned his power to control minds and make himself invisible. As matter of fact, the exotic woman knows how to pierce in that power and unveal the Shadow so to be an easy target for a gun or even a deadly cobra.

It's funny that in the very intro (the story then will play as a flashback that will bring the listeners to the point the episodes starts with) the woman is threatening the Shadow by saying this is the end of his carreer: and here I was thinking that fighting the crime was more a mission than a carreer ;)

The quality of the audio of this particular episode is not one of the best but we are talking of 70 years old recordings here, so we can't really complain, can we?

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

Francesco

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"Hounds in the Hills" (Feb 20, 1938)

I haven't gone through all the episodes yet but this is definitely one of my favorite so far. The reason is the somehow more horror vibe that you get from listening to this story.
We are in the outdoors, the boondock region of North Carolina. Some crazy lady and her hunchback son have been kidnapping kids for quite some time now, and they do it again while Lamont and Margo are in the area visiting a friend. The Shadow jumps on the case and soon finds the old (haunted?) mansion where the kids are segregated. The horror tones turn into the more familiar (to the Shadow) crime story when we find out that the old house is also the hideout of two crooks. These will hunt the Shadow down in the woods, with the help of the kidnappers' ferocious, cross-breed hounds.

Definitely the episode that inspired one of Mr Burns' (of the Simpsons fame) best tag lines: "Release the hounds!" :)
To find out how the Shadow will get out from this hillbilly/Deliverance situation, 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