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Sunday, October 17, 2021

WHERE EAST IS EAST (1929)

Lon Chaney’s penultimate silent* (a final collaboration with director Tod Browning, King of the Creep-Out) was this uninspired story of father/daughter love . . .  and a gorilla.  (Make that a man in a gorilla suit.)  You know, typical Tod Browning.  Chaney, living in Indo-Chinese luxury when not in the jungle trapping wild animals for zoos & the circus, comes home to find half-Asian daughter Lupe Velez (natch) engaged to the son of one of his contractors.  With a single-parent’s too-close-for-comfort bond with his girl (they wrestle to show affection), Papa is resistant to the lad until he stands up to a tiger on the loose.  But a second test proves tougher, Chaney’s ‘Ex,’ the mother who deserted Velez as a child, this exotic man-eater is vamping her way into the boy’s . . . er . . . heart.  Taylor with merely a whiff of YellowFace makeup and an ‘Oriental’ hairdo (she looks strikingly like Barbara Stanwyck) steals the pic.  If only it were worth stealing.  Exotic Far Eastern atmosphere & chintz-loaded sets can’t stop the plot from misfiring.  Why should Chaney want to fight for this unfaithful boy?  Why hide the truth about Taylor?  Why use a man in a gorilla suit as deus ex machina?  (Deus ex aculeatus?)  Disappointing.

DOUBLE-BILL: Chaney & Browning at their magnificent sickest in THE UNKNOWN/’27.  Chaney an ‘Armless’ Knife-Throwing Wonder and young Joan Crawford as his target.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Chaney’s final silent, THUNDER/’29, a ‘lost’ film.  ALSO: Note who’s Top-Billed in France.  Fright taking a backseat to La Femme.

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