Even with hardly any makeup, Lon Chaney could change his face in different ways to express various monsters of the human variety. Crippled due to unnecessary amputation as a child, he is emotionally as dead as his missing legs, and this has turned him into a much feared evil man. When he smiles and is calm, he is still quite handsome. But as a taskmaster of a woman's hat shop, he is a brutal boss, abusing one woman for the lack of quality in her work, then taking it out on the others by announcing fiendishly that one of their old workers who turned to street walking has been killed. The face changes again when he gets a bit of womanly affection, and he's kind and handsome again. When he gets a chance for revenge on the doctor who cut off his legs, Chaney grabs at it, going after the doctor's daughter, prompting him at one point to ask one of the men in the Barbary Coast where he leads a gang of mobsters if he looks like Satan.
A sinister atmosphere and an avant garde look makes this psychological thriller rather horrific in theme, especially the discovery of a secret hospital room beneath a fireplace where Chaney lives. He shows moments in his characterization of great tenderness, and others of extreme sadistic evil. Tinting colors in the print I saw change to reflect each mood, and the musical score added to the Kino print is quite haunting. With lines like "I can murder anything but music", Chaney shows the cultural elegance behind his nefarious mind, the danger in the human soul that can erupt and change without warning. I wouldn't call this subtle in any means, but as a work of art, it has some excellent profound moments that makes his monstrous character seem nearly sane. But there's perversion running through his soul, using various women for his purpose, and this shows just how the psychosis inside this characteristic damns him just as he had with the various enemies he tried to destroy.
And don't forget, "He;s got religion. That means he'll raise hell."
A sinister atmosphere and an avant garde look makes this psychological thriller rather horrific in theme, especially the discovery of a secret hospital room beneath a fireplace where Chaney lives. He shows moments in his characterization of great tenderness, and others of extreme sadistic evil. Tinting colors in the print I saw change to reflect each mood, and the musical score added to the Kino print is quite haunting. With lines like "I can murder anything but music", Chaney shows the cultural elegance behind his nefarious mind, the danger in the human soul that can erupt and change without warning. I wouldn't call this subtle in any means, but as a work of art, it has some excellent profound moments that makes his monstrous character seem nearly sane. But there's perversion running through his soul, using various women for his purpose, and this shows just how the psychosis inside this characteristic damns him just as he had with the various enemies he tried to destroy.
And don't forget, "He;s got religion. That means he'll raise hell."