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When it comes to enjoying a nice chilly October night – especially near Halloween’s festive date – there’s nothing else like the scares of a good silent horror film to entertain. Saturated with mood and melodramatic with its frights, little else will do it right to get you in the spooky mood. Wallace Worsley’s The Penalty, starring the master of the macabre Lon Chaney, might just be your best trick or treat yet. .
Based on a novel by Gouverneur Morris, The Penalty is about a ferocious gangster named Blizzard (Chaney) and his quest for revenge. Blizzard’s legs were mistakenly amputated at a young age by Dr. Ferris (Charles Clary). Driven insane by the social pressures of being forced to walk in a crutch, Blizzard uses his magnanimous personality to do evil with. He wants his legs back and he will stop at nothing to get them grafted back on…even if the legs belong to someone else.
Before he reached icon status for his commanding work in The Phantom of the Opera, Chaney wowed audiences in the role of Blizzard. Simulating amputated legs, Chaney wore an apparatus that pinned his feet as close to his back as would allow. It was a complex system of straps his doctors warned him against wearing and, by having his knees strapped into two wooden buckets, it meant Chaney would be walking on his knees the entire duration of the shoot. Ouch. In fact, Chaney was in so much pain that some say the anger added to his performance as a criminal gone mad.
Co-starring Ethel Grey Terry, Claire Adams, James Mason and Kenneth Harlan, the film’s supporting cast is interesting and does much to carry the gangster picture when Chaney is not on the screen. The emotional touches from Adams and Harlan add some good moments and the steely eyes of Mason are enough to cause some to shudder. Yet, none match the fire of Chaney’s twisted performance. There is even an interesting and utterly disturbing master and servant relationship that develops between Terry (his piano pedal pusher always at her knees) and Chaney (always at the keys). Strangely sexual, it’s these moments that give the film its lasting impression.
When Chaney’s twisted revenge scheme itself gets knotted up by a surprise ending, director Worsley’s secret ambition for the picture – arguably as an anti-communist narrative – is fully realized. This is compelling work, probably only brought down a notch in our modern sensibilities by the melodramatic acting style of the day. Remember, in the early part of our film history, we still had not a single clue how exact the camera would be. The camera remains static and the viewer only gets a few cue cards for lines and lines of dialogue.
The Penalty, celebrating its color tinted corrected blu-ray release from Kino International, is a top-shelf thriller that needs to be seen as the character piece it is.
MPAA Rating: This titlae has not been rated by the MPAA.
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