Lon Chaney Horror

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
(1923)
Dir - Wallace Worsley
Overall: GOOD

Spending years as a character actor in multitudes of shorts and feature-length films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the staring vehicle that propelled Lon Chaney into a money-making name.  Speaking of money, Universal spent a great deal adapting the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, constructing enormous sets, making thousands of costumes, and utilizing hundreds of extras.  Though the movie has very few traces of anything horror related and even turns the camera deliberately away from all of the acts of violence, Chaney's Quasimodo became his first iconic "monster" character and one of the many elaborate make-up jobs of his career.  Contorting his body, morphing his cheekbones, using a glass eye, and carrying a heavy, rubber hump on his back, his transformation is a captivating one even if his screen time is relatively short compared to the main melodrama between the beggars, gypsies, and royal aristocrats of 1482 Paris.  The film feels its length at times, but it is also fitting to the grand presentation to go big or go home.  Any fans of Chaney's work cannot go wrong in starting here.

THE MONSTER
(1925)
Dir - Ronald West
Overall: MEH

Made independently by director Roland West though later distributed by MGM, The Monster is a misleading, top-billed vehicle for Lon Chaney who only shows up for a handful of minutes, nearly all of which are in the final moments of the final act.  Chaney is more hammy than menacing and plays one of the first in what would become stereotypical, "inmates running the asylum" mad scientist type characters in horror cinema.  Not that he does a bad job of course, but there is just so little of him to go around and so little for him to do besides smile manically and make a few gestures in a white surgeons gown.  The film has not aged well anywhere else either.  It is primarily a comedy, but the running gags are lame and the main cast, (since let's face it, Chaney is a support player at best), is mostly unmemorable, save for Johnny Arthur who does an adequate job as an aspiring, wimpy detective that no one takes seriously who of course comes out on top.  The story is a dragging snore though and easily one of the least interesting, early old dark house movies that meanders around lame set pieces and barely has anything funny or creepy thrown in to wake up the audience.

THE UNKNOWN
(1927)
Dir - Tod Browning
Overall: GREAT

One of the strongest overall performances from Lon Chaney and possibly the best existing collaboration between he and Tod Browning was the mad carnival, doomed romance thriller The Unknown.  Though some early scenes are still presumably lost forever, (which ends up clocking the whole film in at a mere fifty-so minutes), nothing feels rushed even as things escalate rather quickly.  Working with the real life, armless performance artist Paul Desmuke who provided the actor's elaborate feet stunts, Chaney is fascinatingly tortured and unhinged as the circus performer Alonzo, bringing both uncomfortable menace and pity to his every scene.  A young, completely unrecognizable Joan Crawford is also a plus for any classic Hollywood cinefile and her silent, reved-up proclamation of how much she hates hands provides a good, unintended chuckle.  With Browning also providing the story, it is very much an auteur work for the director whose fascination with the life of the circus and its freaks works as well if not better here than it does in the more notorious and well known actual Freaks which he would make five years later.  Outside of perhaps The Phantom of the Opera, this could easily stand as Chaney's most fascinating if not best movie.

 

WEST OF ZANZIBAR

(1928)

Dir - Tod Browning

Overall: GOOD

 

A rare Lon Chaney film that features synchronized music and sound effects, West of Zanzibar is an adaptation of Charles de Vonde and Kilbourn Gordon's 1926 stage play Kongo, which would be remade again four years later by MGM.  This was the penultimate movie that Browning and Chaney would do together and also stands as the only time that Chaney shared the screen with Lionel Barrymore and Warner Baxter, all of whom were heavyweights at the time.  An A-production in this respect with stylish jungle sets and plenty of scantily-clad extras, this was another excellent showcase for Chaney as a man who is crippled not just literally from the waste down yet also spiritually.  After losing the use of his legs due to a melodramatic outburst and gaining a sense of power in a remote African outpost, Chaney crawls around and bitterly sets his all-consuming revenge plan in motion, tormenting and manipulating those around him until a twist reveals the folly of his ways.  Some scenes involving Chaney in a duck costume are either lost or were never shot outside of existing stills, but even without elaborate outfits or make-up at his disposal, (except when becoming a voodoo priest of sorts), he still manages to command the screen in a doomed and gritty tragedy such as this.