Typical Lon Chaney vehicle from 1922; ten films that year, moving him up from support to top-billed. Mostly, naturally his Fagin in OLIVER TWIST puts him below child phenom Jackie Coogan’s Oliver. This one something of a template for much of Chaney’s career: Wronged years ago by some powerful man, he nurses a grudge before returning in disguise for his chance at revenge.* Here, framed by a wealthy businessman via forged signatures, he finaly breaks out of prison after hearing of his wife’s serious illness . . . too late! He watches from afar as her coffin is carried out of a tenement apartment before spotting his daughter, now a young woman who has no memory of him. Complications? ONE: the entire police force on the hunt for the escaped prisoner, so he’s forced to hide in plain sight disguised as a twisted cripple, sheltered by Chinatown Tong Lord Li Fang (Noah Beery!) while hunting down the true guilty party, that businessman. Complication TWO: his daughter is about to be engaged to the son of that very man, the villain Chaney plans to avenge. Yikes! Alas, three major obstacles hold the film down. ONE: Chaney’s oddly ineffective disguise as a cripple with twisted legs and crutches. (Likely more uncomfortable for Lon to wear than for us to witness.) TWO: Irving Cummings’ duller than dull direction. (Cummings peaked in the ‘40s with light fare at 20th/Fox.) And THREE: sadly subfusc surviving picture elements.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Chaney was one of the fortunate few who went to M-G-M and was paired with a series of truly outstanding, visually oriented directors.. Tod Browning, George W. Hill, Benjamin Christensen, Herbert Brenon (far better in silents than in Talkies) and Victor Seastrom whose HE WHO GETS SLAPPED/’24 (co-starring Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Tully Marshall) is a paradigm of the standard Chaney narrative formula.
