The Shock

Lon Chaney plays Wilse Dilling, a cripple who gave into the enticements of crime long ago. Chaney is working for a ruthless woman in Chinatown in San Francisco and is sent to a small town to "keep his eyes open" and "make friends." There he is befriended by a kind young woman who tells him repeatedly that if the cause/dream is right than the will is enough to achieve it. Circumstances such as the young woman having a fiancée and her father the object of the ruthless woman in Chinatown make this one heck of an old-fashioned melodrama with Chaney giving a tour-de-force performance as a crippled criminal blind-sided by love and acts of kindness making him change. Chaney's features, particularly his face, give off such emotion and pathos that he can do so much with so little. The films has many exciting twists and turns culminating an a rather impressively staged earthquake. The Shock, while perhaps a bit hokey in plot, is yet again another example of just how good films were in the silent era and how performers such as Chey were not just the best of his generation but in the pantheon of all-time greats.

In THE SHOCK, Lon Chaney Sr. Plays Wilse Dilling, who goes up against the criminal underworld and its powerful, sadistic boss, Queen Ann Cardington (Christine Mayo).

This silent film is well worth viewing. It contains plenty of the requisite action and pathos in keeping with its era. Chaney Sr. Is again a marvel to behold. Dilling is another memorable character for him with his signature makeup and facial expressions.

In addition, the earthquake sequence is breathtaking!...

I watched this on my Roku and apparently even tho these old silent films are in public domain, the music isn't. So there literally was no sound. It's a weird thing to watch when not accompanied by music of some sort.

The print was decent. actually fairly good for a movie that is nearly 100 years old! The short story upon which this is based was written by a fascist.

Chaney is good, although his work with Browning was always so much better.

Another reviewer commented on how the earthquake scenes look so real -- well alot of them WERE real. They were taken from archival footage. Still, the parts that are not archival -- and there are many, are really really really well done. Unfortunately you have to wait until there is like 6 minutes left of the film to see the big payoff.

Some of the film is rather hokey and overall it's slow moving. The ending is the thing to see,

I love Chaney. He had an extremely expressive face, and the sort of body language that's seen all too rarely, especially these days. In this film, where his character is a hard-bitten criminal softening under the influence of small-town life, he really uses his talents. His ability to really LOOK disabled is amazing; the way he drags himself around on his hands, twisted legs trailing behind him, is fascinating.

This isn't one of Chaney's "thousand faces" roles - you can actually see what he really looked like - but well worth watching, for Chaney alone. It's a shame that the role of the leading lady wasn't fleshed out; she's so good and pure that she's completely boring; I couldn't understand why anyone could stand this woman's company for more than a few minutes, since she has no faults. Had she been a well-rounded character, his love for her would have been believable (not that there's anything wrong with Chaney's portrayal of tormented, unrequited love).

Lon Chaney once again plays a criminal, and a crippled one on crutches at that. He's Wilse Dilling, and he's a feared killer and dope peddler working out of San Francisco's Chinatown (again) for Queen Ann (Christine Mayo), the boss of the criminal underworld in the city. She sends Wilse out to a small country town to keep an eye out on a banker (William Welsh), but Wilse falls for the banker's pious daughter Gertrude (Virginia Valli). Will Wilse be able to carry out his sinister orders when the time comes, or has Gertrude's kind and religious way of life helped the career criminal turn his life around? Also featuring Jack Mower, Henry A. Barrows, Harry De Vere, John Beck, Walter Long, and Togo Yamamoto.

Chaney seems to have hit a creative rut here, as several aspects of his previous films are repeated and mixed together. The film sets up Wilse as being a real scary customer, one to be feared, but whenever things get tough in the film's second half, he just gets tossed around like, well, a cripple. The movie's deus ex machina finale is silly, as is the implausibly happy ending. On the plus side, Chaney is once again good at playing a multi-layered character, and he gets to show some subtle facial acting. Director Lambert Hillyer would stick around Universal into the sound era.