Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Cortechba Overrated

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

JohnHowardReid Like A Tale of Two Worlds, this Gouverneur Morris tale is not only also set in San Francisco, but has an even larger credibility gap. If it's hard enough to credit that Leatrice Joy is so mentally deficient, she never once had the slightest inkling that she was not Chinese, it's even more difficult to comprehend that even the most asinine of doctors would risk performing an amputation with absolutely no assistance whatever. And he didn't strike me as the sort of doctor like Charles Coburn in King's Row who carries a surgical saw around in his bag. We are then asked to believe that this incompetent quack who is nonetheless such an expert with the surgical saw, is joined by an equally criminal halfwit who makes a correct diagnosis but then not only covers up his colleague's error, but does nothing to remedy the patient's real problem. Instead of focusing on these criminal incompetents, however, the story takes a somewhat different tack and asks us to believe that the victim has set out to revenge himself on these quacks with an ingenious plan that utilizes only five or six thousand people and ties up only about two or three million dollars in bribes, real estate and extensive construction work. And to add insult to injury, Morris doesn't bother to tell us how the end result - namely looting the city - is to be achieved. We are given hints, but actual facts elude us, and after building up our expectations, the movie ends on a very lame note indeed. But until this disappointing fade-out, the movie certainly grips the attention - and that's mostly due to Chaney's startling performance (and gymnastics). This is his movie, and he never lets us forget it.

aspenentertains Myself being a listener of TV and not a devoted watcher, find Sunday nights with TCM an unpleasant distraction with most scores for the Silent Movies catching up a bit late to my consciousness with welcome relief by my latent push of a button. These scores no matter the orchestrations, generate memories of organ music in vintage Soap Operas. The Penalty was different and had me listening till the end with delight. I am sorry if in fact as some others say, it does not match the film. My hope is their conclusion is based on their own barriers. I will settle back one day and watch it for my own conclusion.

kidboots This was Lon Chaney's first starring film after wowing everyone in "The Miracle Man".I watched "The Penalty" at night and it really scared me. Even though people are dismissive of the ending - that it is too "comfortable" - I needed that ending - I would have found it difficult to get to sleep otherwise. Lon Chaney plays Blizzard, the insane crime lord of the San Francisco underworld. As a child he was the victim of a botched operation which left him a double amputee. He overhears the doctors talking about how the operation was unnecessary and grows up bitter and twisted in his mind.Chaney's performance is outstanding - he endured great pain by strap- ping his legs up at the knees in a specially made harness. Not only that but he perfected the walk until he actually walked like he had always been an amputee. Jumping onto tables, climbing up ladders, sliding down poles - all landing on his knees!!!He runs a millinery where he terrorizes the factory girls by jumping on the table and grabbing their hair. If one happens to catch his fancy - she becomes his personal slave - and is forced to use her hands as pedals when he plays the piano as he has no legs!!!He is surrounded by an evil henchman - Frisco Pete - who will stop at nothing to keep in Blizzard's good books - even to killing one of the girls, Barbary Nell who has left the factory to make out on her own.Litchenstein head of the secret police wants one of his agents, Rose (Ethel Grey Terry) to go undercover to get evidence to destroy Blizzard. Blizzard has a plan to take over the city and seek revenge on the doctor that operated on him as a boy.The doctor, now a famous surgeon, has a daughter who is a sculptor but wants to do a worthwhile piece of art before she marries. She places an advertisement in the paper for models that look like Satan. Blizzard is hired!!!!Meanwhile Rose has been working undercover and found nothing. When Blizzard is out she finds an underground passage - complete with an operating theatre. He plans to form an army of disgruntled foreigners who will loot the city. Blizzard, by this time will have had an operation on his legs to make him able bodied and the legs he is looking at belong to Wilmot, the doctor's assistant. There is an operation but not the one he demands!!!Lon Chaney's facial expressions are really remarkable - in a lot of scenes he really looks satanic. There are no known names in the cast - Kenneth Harlan, who had a reasonable career and at one time was married to Marie Prevost, plays Wilmot. Cesare Gravina, who had a part in "Greed" as the junkman, has a small part in this film playing a sculpting instructor.This is a fantastic film - I will give it 10 out of 10.

Tenkun The Man of a Thousand Faces in 1920, before his prime, under the direction of Wallace Worsley who would make him the Hunchback. But instead of being the sympathetic and heart-warming freak, here he is a demoniacal madman out for revenge."The Penalty" follows Blizzard, an underworld mastermind who had his legs unnecessarily amputated as a child (kinda like Reagan in "Kings Row"). And aside from general evil, crime, and mayhem, his main goal is to claim revenge on the doctor who did it. After we see the grisly mangling, we move to modern-day (1920) San Francisco where Frisco Pete, a drugged-out hoodlum, murders showgirl Barbary Nell and then flees to sanctuary at Blizzard's hide-out. The police send Rose, their undercover girl, to disguise herself as one of Blizzard's many molls, and become practically a concubine who presses the pedals as Blizzard plays the piano. Meanwhile, he works to seduce the sculptress daughter of the doctor who deformed him, posing as Satan for a sculpture. And all the while he's planning for the greatest crime spree of them all, when he'll bring thousands of disgruntled foreign laborers in to conquer the city...God, "The Penalty" is creepy. It might not be the best-made movie of all time; the actors might not all stand out; the ending may be a cop-out. But it's got a lot of good points going for it. First, the title. "The Penalty" is about penalties of all kinds: Dr. Ferris must pay a penalty for his youthful indiscretions; Blizzard must pay a penalty for his life of crime. San Francisco must pay for creating monsters like Blizzard and Frisco Pete. The film is submerged in an idea of guilt, revenge, and comeuppance. Lon Chaney, as always, is an asset, in building a disturbing atmosphere of fear and loathing, as well as messing with the viewer's psyche through his performance. On turns you pity and hate him. Sure, he's evil. But his evil is so hypnotically attractive. And he's not entirely to blame for it. He's got no legs- can he still be fully responsible for his actions? Whatever Blizzard does, he revels in it. Climbing up the wall, with those stumps- can you take it? Like other quasi-horror films of the '20s and '30s, "The Penalty" is rife with hellish, gargoylian imagery. Beyond the buckets on Chaney's stumps and his legless swagger, there's the satanic sculpture and the apocalyptic fantasies (in which we see SF reduced to anarchic rubble) and the secret room full of chorus girls making hats, and the dirty underground corridors hidden behind Blizzard's fireplace, and the fully equipped operating room (in which he sets his bizarre revenge, which is worthy of Tod Browning). Then, looking at "The Penalty" from our postmodern perch, we can also enjoy the tinting (which changes from scene to scene) which gives it an almost psychedelic flavor, especially when combined with the soundtrack, which is a mixed bag. It's got some organ, some indistinguishable wailing, a couple possible leitmotifs, and what could be music from the darker levels of Super Mario Bros. It all comes together to give us, basically, "The Phantom of the Opera" meets "Citizen Kane" in hell, dimmed a few notches.What can I say? If you like Lon Chaney, you're bound to love his role here. The finale may be a let-down, but those are the breaks. Watch with plenty of suspended disbelief and immerse yourself in the abstractly gritty, mildly Gothic San Francisco gangland of the 1920s.