Shadow of Chinatown | |
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![]() Film poster advertising the first episode | |
Directed by | Robert F. Hill |
Written by | William Buchanan (screenplay) Basil Dickey (screenplay) Robert F. Hill (story) |
Produced by | Sam Katzman |
Starring | See below |
Cinematography | William Hyer |
Edited by | Charles Henkel Jr. |
Distributed by | Victory Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 71 minutes (film) 281 minutes (serial) |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Shadow of Chinatown is both a 1936 film serial and a feature film edited from the serial made by Sam Katzman's Victory Pictures.
A consortium of American businesses are disturbed by the loss of profits due to Chinese businesses located in Chinatowns in the United States. They hire a pair of Eurasians and their criminal organization to eliminate their competition.
The serial chapters are as follows:
The serial was known originally as just Chinatown and was written with Lugosi in mind. [2]
A feature version of this serial was released simultaneously with the serial itself. It was also called "Shadow of Chinatown" with a slightly altered ending. [3]
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor, best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
William Henry Pratt, known professionally as Boris Karloff and occasionally billed as Karloff the Uncanny, was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film Frankenstein (1931) established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932), and voiced the Grinch in, as well as narrating, the animated television special of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), which won him a Grammy Award.
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Nickel Flicks is an American television series that premiered on Nickelodeon in 1979 as one of the network's inaugural programs, and the first original series created for the channel after its launch. It showcased "cliffhanger" serials from the 1920s–40s, in addition to early comic one-reelers and silent short films. It was hosted by producer John Moschitta, who later became famous as the "World's Fastest Talker" in commercials for FedEx. This was Moschitta's first on-camera television role. Nickel Flicks was notably the first Nickelodeon show to be cancelled and the shortest-lived out of Nickelodeon's inaugural series; according to Moschitta, it was cancelled due to complaints about the violent nature of many of the serials.
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