The Monster (1925)

Director: Roland West
Writer: Willard Mack and Albert G. Kenyon, based on the play by Crane Wilbur
Stars: Lon Chaney and Johnny Arthur

Here’s an interesting movie, but not for the reasons we expect. I’m up for anything that’s got Lon Chaney in the cast, but he doesn’t do much in this film and he overdoes what little he does. His other two extant 1925 movies are notable for him rather than other people; this one isn’t worth watching for Chaney alone.

However, it’s absolutely worth watching for fans of director Roland West, made before The Bat and The Bat Whispers and outdoing both of them on the old dark house front. In fact, this outdoes The Old Dark House, which wouldn’t be made for another seven years anyway. Once it gets moving, every scene seems to feature at least one and often two or three different old dark house tropes arriving so quickly that we can’t close our eyes in case we miss some.

It does take a little while to get moving and much of that is because, while Chaney was the big name, it’s really a Johnny Arthur vehicle, a comedy horror with him getting scared at any opportunity that arises but somehow making it through to be the hero anyway. In that way, it’s as much a precursor to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as The Old Dark House.

This began life as a successful stage play by Crane Wilbur and Arthur was a comedian and actor on stage long before he made it onto the big screen. I could imagine his particular style of nervous cowardice playing well on stage, in comedies at least, but he’s too much even for silent film. I’ve seen this before and reviewed it too, but I never seem to remember him.

What I remember is the house and that play must have boasted some truly imaginative set construction. Once Arthur’s been established, we spend most of the movie in Doc Edwards’s sanitarium, now run by the lunatics who may be crazy but are somehow capable enough to remodel it in pretty substantial ways.

But Arthur must be established first and he serves three roles as Johnny Goodlittle. One is that he’s scared of his own shadow. That runs counter to the second, which is that he’s been studying to become a detective. Just when it’s needed, his correspondence school diploma is delivered, complete with badge, gun and pair of oversize handcuffs!

His third role is as a man in love, because he pines so palpably for Betty Watson that I had to wonder how often he has to change his trousers. Unfortunately, he has a rival for her affections in Amos Rugg, who appears to be a much more confident and successful man but is really just as much a coward.

Both work at Luke Watson’s Emporium in Danburg, but Amos is Johnny’s boss and Betty is the owner’s daughter, so manager Amos has the edge over clerk Johnny, at least for now.

What sparks change is the disappearance of a wealthy farmer called John Bowman. There isn’t much investigative expertise in Danburg, Russ Mason police and fire departments in a single man, so an insurance company sends Det. Jennings to handle the case. He doesn’t get very far but overly keen Johnny finds a clue: a note at the scene of the disappearance with a simple message—“help” written as if in a mirror—along with the sanitarium’s name. It’s been closed for two months, as Edwards is abroad, so the clue is ignored.

Now, we know how Bowman went missing. A man in a tree, sporting black metal corpse paint drops a mirror onto a road at night like Wile E. Coyote might do, so that the farmer swerves to avoid himself, so wrecking his car. Amos and Betty are grabbed in the same way.

We might think he’s the monster of the title and, quite frankly, I’m not sure that he isn’t, as we’re never told who the film is named for, but there are other candidates, Johnny finds after stumbling onto the slide used to deliver these captives into the sanitarium.

He’s already met Daffy Dan outside a party at Betty’s, who asked him for a match to light his imaginary cigarette. In the sanitarium he meets Dr. Ziska, who says he’s in charge while Edwards is away; Caliban, an oiled giant who works for Ziska; and Rigo, the man in the tree, who apparently spends plenty of his time in trances that make him seem dead.

He also encounters Amos and Betty and the trio become highly suspicious guests, for good reason, because this is when it gets frenzied in its old dark house shenanigans. Every trope in the genre is here, only beginning with secret passages. You could orchestrate a bingo game around old dark house tropes!

Secret passage? Check. Hands coming out of the wall? Check. Metal plates that descend to block windows? Check. Furniture that lowers into the floor? Check. Furniture that’s rigged to kill? Check. How about an electric chair for good measure? Check.

My favourite scene is the most frantic, with a mad chase up dumb waiters and ladders to the roof, a tightrope walk over the telephone wires to safety, but then a slide down storeys of banisters after safety proved illusory. This was 1925 and I can only imagine the noise the audiences of the day must have made to such a madcap chase! From my British perspective, a whole slew of scenes would warrant the sort of audience response that you’d expect at any pantomime, like “He’s behind you!” chants.

Of course Chaney plays Dr. Ziska but he has no intention of doing it subtly to make us buy into his claimed position. We know he’s one of the patients from moment one, because he’s a stereotypical villain even by the standards of silent movies. He doesn’t have a moustache to twirl but he thrusts clenched fists at the gods and curses them in anger.

Walter James is a suitably vast presence as Caliban, a role he also played on stage in the original 1922 play. However, he often played uniformed authority figures. As with Ziska, it isn’t hard to see why he’s been committed.

I have no idea what’s wrong with Rigo, on the other hand, other than a heck of a lot. It’s not like the play called for a Norwegian black metal singer to be cast as Wile E. Coyote, too early for both by far. George Austin plays him here and I would dearly love to know what he channelled to do so.

As Betty, Gertrude Olmstead proves to be as desirable as her name isn’t and Hallam Cooley is an easy romantic rival to hate. However, it has to be said that both and everyone else I’ve mentioned is outshone by the sanitarium.

This is all about the old dark house and it’s rare to see so much shoehorned into so little space. Trip over your toes here and you’ll be triggering something. I want to live there!