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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