EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

gavin6942 A meek clerk (Johnny Arthur) who doubles as an amateur detective investigates some very strange goings-on at a remote mental sanitarium.Director Roland West did not make a great many films (he seems to have been more of a stage director), but he did do a few with Lon Chaney. This is one of those few.The movie probably is not well known, but it has the reputation of being one of the first "mad scientist" movies, and has the distinction of being an "old dark house" movie, actually beating "The Old Dark House" (1932) to the punch.And while the horror elements are here (the scientist and the monster), this also works great as a comedy. There are some funny intertitles with some racy humor (including a milkman joke), and the humorous bannister / storm gag is worthy of Buster Keaton.Lastly, a special shout-out to Gertrude Olmstead, one of the "victims" of the talkies. Olmstead had a strong career in the silent era and has an excellent presence, but she never made the transition to sound and is now almost completely forgotten. A shame.

ametaphysicalshark This 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney and Johnny Arthur and directed by Roland West ("The Bat", "The Bat Whispers") is a harmless little horror-comedy about two men and a woman who get trapped in an old dark house with a mad scientist (the always excellent Chaney) and go through a series of perilous events caused by the scientist and his never ending supply of creepy servants. The acting is good and the production values are superb. Most of the comedy is funny and the creepy parts still hold up reasonably well. All in all, "The Monster" is no classic and certainly one of Lon Chaney's less remarkable films but it's still a decent, harmless film.

Neil Doyle Timid JOHNNY ARTHUR carries the first half-hour of THE MONSTER as a detective wanna-be, a sort of silent screen version of the characters Woody Allen often played decades later. Based on a play by Crane Wilbur, the slow moving story takes time to even get to the sanitarium nearby where the mystery angle of the plot will be unraveled.Playing detective, Arthur accidentally stumbles into a house of horrors. Meantime, after a road accident, his girlfriend and his boss stumble into the same mansion seeking help. It is then that Dr. Ziska (LON CHANEY) makes his sinister appearance, informing them that they must stay in the house overnight since he has no telephone. He tells his hulking servant to make them comfortable.Chaney plays his role similar to Bela Lugosi's caped Dracula, so the chill effect is everything it ought to be in a dark house thriller played with mock fright. The comedy aspect of the story would have made a great vehicle for Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard (a la their CAT AND THE CANARY) dark house comedy.It seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum. The mad doctor Ziska has locked Dr. Edwards and his assistants in a dungeon below the mansion and has the patients carrying out his orders. Amateur detective Arthur saves the day by shooting off Roman candles that alert the townspeople to his help signal.It's all done in spirited good fun and confusion, played for laughs more than horror although there is a definite combination of mirth and fright.Summing up: Good dark house comedy with all the usual drawbacks of early silent films but more watchable than most. Not a typical Chaney film by any means. Much lighter than Roland West's THE BAT WHISPERS.

funkyfry 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.