Screenplay by Willard Mack and Albert Kenyon
Based on the play by Crane Wilbur
Directed by Roland West
Starring Lon Chaney, Johnny Arthur and Gertrude Olmstead
USA, 1925
Here's a little silent movie I'd never heard of before, THE MONSTER, starring Lon Chaney, probably the biggest horror star of the silent error. It's not as fascinating as the other Chaney movies I've seen, but with a short running time and some cool sets, weird characters and crazy stunts, it was worth a watch.
Two romantic rivals (Johnny Arthur and Hallam Cooley) investigate a seemingly abandoned sanitarium when local travelers go missing. Before they know it, they, and the girl they're fighting over (Gertrude Olmstead) end up prisoners of the mad doctor (Lon Chaney) who has taken over the sanitarium and is kidnapping people for his unorthodox experiments with the help of his three insane henchmen (Walter James, Knute Erickson and George Austin).
Turns out, the mad doctor has captured the sane doctors who once ran the sanitarium and is holding them in a hidden dungeon while he carries out his experiments. The sanitarium is a classic "old dark house," possibly one of the first of its kind on film, with lots of hidden passage ways and traps. This is only one of the firsts, however, as Chaney's mad doctor and his mad henchmen mark one of the earliest appearances of the mad scientist in cinema as we know it today (allowing of course for Dr. Caligari from THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and Rotwang from METROPOLIS).
Although he's the biggest star here, Lon Chaney sort of plays second fiddle to the madcap antics of the bumbling heroes and equally bumbling henchmen surrounding him. Although this is Horrorfest, this movie is as much a comedy as it is anything else, and much of the run-time is taken up with Johnny Arthur's pratfalls as an amateur detective who solves the case and gets the girl in the end, in spite of himself.
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