Cryptoscatology: LON CHANEY JR.'S UNHOLY 13

A couple of years ago, to help improve your Halloween viewing experience, I posted a list of what I considered to be the top thirteen films of both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This year I decided to extend the same courtesy to Lon Chaney, Jr., who co-starred with both Karloff (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE BLACK CASTLE) and Lugosi (THE WOLF MAN, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, and THE BLACK SLEEP) in several memorable films. What follows is an excerpt from my 2019 article, "Death Comes to Dark Oaks: Son of Dracula as Film Noird (and Other Occult Matters)," which was published in Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver's book, SCRIPTS FROM THE CRYPT: SON OF DRACULA:

Once we accept Lugosi’s absence from [Son of Dracula], we can move on and appreciate Chaney’s performance. To this day, even among devoted horror fans, Chaney is castigated as an actor of limited range. And yet how many actors of “limited range” could deliver a performance that still has the impact of Chaney’s turn as Lennie in Lewis Mileston’s 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men? It’s hard to imagine any other 1940s Hollywood leading man capable of bringing to the screen the doomed gravitas necessary to make Lawrence Talbot’s phantasmagoric predicament as a cursed outsider believable and sympathetic, as Chaney does in George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941). Legendary producer-director Stanley Kramer clearly respected Chaney’s acting skills very much, as he cast him in key supporting roles in High Noon (1952), Not as a Stranger (1955), and The Defiant Ones (1958). In the 2015 article “Evolution of a Horror Star,” Greg Mank insists that Chaney’s interpretation of ex-convict Big Sam, who dissuades a mob from lynching protagonists John “Joker” Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) in The Defiant Ones, should have earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It’s hard to disagree with that assessment.

Chaney’s style was not Lugosi’s style. Lugosi’s over the top, quasi-surreal acting techniques could often make his horror films even more dreamlike than originally intended. Chaney’s approach was the reverse. Chaney operated as a ballast for the High Weirdness that surrounded him in his films. To appear believable and relatable, no matter how outlandish or garish the situation, was Chaney’s main talent.

Chaney’s Midwestern, down-to-earth persona; his overpowering physique; his weathered roadmap of a face that so often seemed to bear permanent, unseen scars lurking just beneath the surface: all of these elements combined to create a necessary anchor for the carnivalesque strangeness that surrounded his own personal cinematic universe. His ability to impart gritty realism to even the nuttiest and most melodramatic scenarios is evident in his most memorable roles: not just the aforementioned man-child Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men; not just poor, doomed Lawrence Talbot in that quintet of classic horror films, i.e., The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein (1944), The House of Dracula (1945), and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; not just the tired, fatalistic Sheriff Martin Howe in High Noon, but also in less appreciated works such as Jack Hill’s Spider Baby (1967), Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), Roy Del Ruth’s The Alligator People (1959), Bert I. Gordon’s The Cyclops (1957), Jack Pollexfen’s Indestructible Man (1956), Roy Kellino’s TV episode "The Golden Junkman" (1956), John Hoffman’s Strange Confession (1945), Reginald Le Borg’s The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and George Waggner’s Man Made Monster (1941). Some of these films are genuine masterpieces of cult cinema (e.g., Spider Baby); others boast significant historical importance (e.g., The Haunted Palace is the first cinematic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, now a veritable cinematic subgenre of its own); some showcase sincere, master class performances within a modest budget (e.g., "The Golden Junkman"); some feature a wonderful starring performance despite the low-budget madness that threatens to overwhelm even Chaney’s considerable presence (the next time you watch Indestructible Man, for example, ask yourself, “Who else but Chaney, Jr. could hold an entire film together with little more than close-ups of his pained eyes?”); others demonstrate that the actor was eminently capable of transmitting genuine emotion even with one hand tied not behind his back, but to the front of his chest (note how Chaney is able to suggest thousands upon thousands of years of frustrated sexual desire with nothing more than subtle body language in The Mummy’s Ghost during the pivotal scene in which Kharis’ long-lost lover, Ananka, dissolves into ash seconds before he’s about to hold her in his arms once more); his Universal debut in Man-Made Monster as “Dynamo” Dan McCormick—a carnival performer with boyish charm who becomes an unwitting guinea pig in an illicit scientific experiment involving electrophysiology and mind control—takes full advantage of Chaney’s ability to shift by degrees from folksy optimism to resigned stoicism to noble selflessness.

And now comes a list of my personal favorite Chaney movies, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous (in fact, some of them manage to combine both elements in a single film)....

SPIDER BABY (1967)