The Monster

Lightweight but enjoyable romp about a lunatic asylum taken over by its star inmate, played by Chaney. This one is played entirely for laughs, but Chaney has to play it straight, in a pretty lame role for the great star. West brings some of his nice effects to bear, in the slick sequence where the milquetoast hero flies through a window on a telephone cord, slides down four stairwells and ends up knocking his assailant out cold! I also especially enjoyed the scenes where the inmates lowered a huge mirror onto the road to divert traffic into a ditch -- it was like something come to life out of a scooby doo cartoon! Great fun in the light gothic style.

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!

A meek store clerk (and aspiring detective) investigating a man's disappearance winds up at a creepy old sanitarium with the girl he loves and his rival. They find the supposedly abandoned place is inhabited by weird Dr. Ziska (Lon Chaney) and his cronies. After the strong opening, I was really expecting this to be a great one. While it is good and I did like it, I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by it. For starters, it's part horror-mystery and part comedy. The horror-mystery parts are good; a precursor to the many mad scientist and old dark house movies to come. But the comedy is pretty weak. The lead character appears to be a rip-off of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr, which was released a year prior. Still, the comedy is the minor part of the movie. Most of it is old dark house/mad scientist craziness with Lon Chaney. That's pretty cool, no matter how you slice it. Also love the sets, gadgets, and special effects.

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).

Lon Chaney is known as "The Man of a Thousand Faces," and known for make-up magic and for playing monster parts, but too little is he recognized as a actor -- at least too little in my opinion.

In "The Monster," he is frequently understated and even almost charming, considering the part.

Johnny Arthur, this time, is a star!

This must be his best part and he too showed he is by gosh an actor.

His character changes, with a little chemical help, but he comes across as believable in every characterization. His face, his gestures, his bodily movement are all just perfect.

Turner Classic Movies showed "The Monster" as part of its Halloween line-up in 2016 and as its Sunday night silent on 30 October, although in the Eastern time zone I guess it was actually Monday, 31 October.

It is a treat, at least once, with some funny situations and funny characters, and some generally excellent acting.

There are some directing or at least editing problems, and you can't take the story too seriously, but mostly it is a lot of fun.