The Monster (1925)

Fresh and Exciting

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

WE HAVE LONG heard of this film; but only viewed it for the very first time yesterday. Owing that fact to the modern marvel & technological miracle known as the DVR, Turner Classic Movies' telecast of this Silent Feature of a week or so ago is right at our finger tips. (Clever, these Americans!) THE MOVIE WAS the subject of one author/reviewer's writing in some book we'd had thirty or so years back. We do recall a few of his remarks today and quite clearly at that.FIRST OF ALL, this now unknown scribe had said that the film was that it was a real puzzlement to the movie going audience of the nineteen twenty five season. The film's dark and spooky mood is quickly off set by comical situations and Title Cards that were befitting productions of Mack Sennett or Hal Roach.SECONDLY THERE WAS an assertion that what the movie actually was successful in parodying the Monster/Mad Scientist genre of Horror film; but before there was such an established classification. This does, on the surface, appear to be an incredible analysis; but one that has reasonable amount of merit.WITH REGARD TO these two notions, we heartily concur. Now that we have at last seen the Lon Chaney vehicle. In this one, the 'monster' is really the evil scientist, Dr. Ziska (Mr.Chaney). In this role, he demonstrates a little realized and appreciated for the comic situations.* HIS SUBDUED CHARACTERIZATION of the elegant yet totally sinister 'host' of the sanitarium must have set the standards and was the model for so many others yet to come in similar roles. One can readily see smatterings of this characterization in performances by Otto Krueger in SABATEUR (Universal,1940) and MURDER, MY SWEET (RKO, 1944); as well as many others.THE SCRIPT DOES seem to purposely make us Midwest Rubes the brunt of so much of the jokes. With its many references to locations in Kansas, Indiana and Illinois, it appears to support the notion that "Big City" folks are superior.AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT of the plot line concerns the General Store Clerk (Johnny Arthur) and both his wanting of fair maiden Betty Watson (Gertrude Olmsted) while at the same time desiring to become a Private Eye.ALTHOUGH IT IS Lon Chaney who gets the starring role & billing, Johnny Arthur's role is the real main character of the story.AND SPEAKING OF the diminutive actor, we remember him as portraying Spanky McFarland's father in an OUR GANG Sound Short, as the bad Imperial Japanese Officer in some Hal Roach Wartime short and as the head of the Axis 5th Column Operative Mura Sakima in the MASKED MARVEL Serial (Republic, 1944).

Lon Chaney, like Edward G. Robinson, was more than happy to parody his image. The surprising thing with Chaney is that it came so early in his "horror" career. This was his second MGM movie - straight after "He Who Gets Slapped", which is probably why it wasn't that popular. A big problem was that audiences of the time found it so hard to understand a movie poking fun at a genre that only came into existence a few years earlier. Roland West was the perfect director for it but although he directed a few atmospheric thrillers like "The Bat", "The Monster" and the excellent early talkie "Alibi", his output was sparse and by 1931 he had directed his last film "Corsair" with his good friend Chester Morris and current girl friend Thelma Todd.Adapted from the play by Crane Wilbur (earlier the hero of "The Perils of Pauline" serial) it had opened in New York in 1922 with a respectable 101 performances. The movie starts out creepily enough. "A human monster watched with cat like eyes for a victim"!!! Then John Bowman, the town's wealthy farmer is run off the road with the old "smoke and mirrors" trick and disappears!!! For the next half hour the film becomes a small town comedy - it seems everybody's a detective and has an opinion, none more so than Johnny Goodlittle (Johnny Arthur) who has just earned his detective diploma and has found a clue at the crime scene - a scribbled message for help with the name of a disused sanitarian - but instead he becomes the town laughing stock.No wonder audiences felt shortchanged. Lon Chaney didn't make his appearance until the 30 minute mark and the two male leads were pretty under whelming. Johnny Arthur, as the put upon hero would not have caught any small town girl's eye and basically played a mincing milquetoast, a role he perfected in the talkies and Hallam Cooley was pretty forgettable as his rival. The last hour takes place at the sanitarian where the lunatics have taken over the asylum and as usual Lon Chaney puts everyone else in the shade. He plays Dr. Ziska and he brilliantly overplays it to the hilt - with his weird bunch of henchmen - "You are trying to make me MAD - and I have an operation to perform"!!! and as one body hurtles down the chute "You sent me a MAN - and you know I wanted a woman"!!! I suppose more sophisticated movie patrons of the time would have enjoyed it but most were probably expecting (with a title like "The Monster") another "Phantom of the Opera". Gertrude Olmstead, as Betty, was a nice actress who was more than happy to retire when she met the love of her life Robert Z. Leonard who was recovering from his years of being married to "Queen of the Divas", Mae Murray.

Johnny Goodlittle (Johnny Arthur) is an amateur detective and sets out to solve the disappearance of John Bowman. Meanwhile he also fights for the attention of Betty Watson (Gertrude Olmstead) from Hal (Hallam Coolley). They soon all end up in a very weird sanitarium run by Dr. Ziska (Lon Channey) who may not be what he seems to be...This has it all--three innocents stuck in a creepy sanitarium on a dark and stormy night; a mad doctor; clutching hands; secret passageways; monsters lurking about and lots of action and adventure. This is a very strange but fun horror comedy with the emphasis on comedy. Some of the comedy is stupid (Arthur getting drunk was tired and unfunny) but, for the most part, it works. The horror aspect here is minor and wouldn't even scare a young kid.The acting is all pretty good. As for Chaney he's obviously enjoying himself--it's one of his few roles when he doesn't have tons of makeup on. He also plays his character way way WAY over the top, but does so in an engaging way.Yes it's a silly movie but, after it gets to the sanitarium, in never stops moving and is lots of fun. It gets only an 8 because of the slow opening half hour and a terrible music score that doesn't even match the images on screen!

I was rather disappointed by THE MONSTER this time around: it has little to offer apart from its very strangeness (which appears to be a trademark of director Roland West, who later made both the silent version of THE BAT [1926] and its first sound remake THE BAT WHISPERS [1930]).The plot is very creaky: typical 'old dark house' stuff - and not especially interesting at that - which frequently borders on the ludicrous. It starts off well enough with an atmospheric sequence set in a thunderstorm, and the comic relief which occupies most of the film's expository first half (possibly inspired by Buster Keaton's SHERLOCK JR., made the previous year) is likable enough. But when the three leading characters get caught inside a desolate sanitarium, taken over by mad scientist Chaney, the film starts to drag and it never quite recovers. Chaney is flanked by three distinctive-looking assistants/former patients: one, dressed in a cape throughout most of the proceedings, is suitably creepy; another, fairly amusing, is a buffoonish character whose child-like approach to things thwarts Chaney's plans more often than abetting them; and there is also the (rather grating) standard of all such flicks, the mute strong-man who never does anything more strenuous than scowling!Chaney himself is wasted here: the scientist, Dr. Ziska, is supposed to be working on some 'great experiment' but this is barely touched upon till the final reel - and by this time, the audience has stopped caring! Johnny Arthur, the film's unlikely hero, gets to do an incredible stunt (another nod to Keaton) and there are a few genuinely eerie scenes, like when a pair of hands reach out from under the sleeping heroine to grasp her. The film also betrays its stage origins by flat and stagy direction - the only other Roland West picture I have watched, THE BAT WHISPERS, is far more cinematically fluid and interesting (if still basically flawed).