CinemaSerf
12/10/2024
So Kane Richmond takes top billing as the "Shadow/Cranston" but it's really "Miss Effie" (Almira Sessions) and "Miss Millie" (Nora Cecil) who steal the scenes as the busy-body lift operators who shimmy around in perfectly symmetrical attire running one of those counter-weight elevators that has a mind of it's own as they entrap their "passengers" whilst they accrue all the gossip. The rest of the plot is all centred on rather a silly misunderstanding between our sleuth and police inspector "Cardona" (James Flavin). You see, the eponymous character is not actually a person, but a foot-high jade statue worth a cool $250,000 - and it's been pinched. The policeman thinks it's a person but "Cranston" knows it's not - and that's the premiss of the hour as they both try to track it/her down whilst the body count mounts up. There's plenty of fisticuffs, trashed furniture and a few wise cracks along the way to an ending that's probably about as convoluted as they come. It's all production-line stuff this with little to remember, but I did think there was just a soupçon of charisma on display here from Barbara Read's "Margo" and the dynamic between the investigator, the inspector and is boss, the "Commissioner" (Pierre Watkin) does raise a smile now and again.
