Category: Silent Age
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A Page of Madness (1926)
How Wikipedia can offer two complete paragraphs describing the plot for A Page of Madness (1926), I’ll never know. I don’t usually like to call attention to the fact that I’ll occasionally glance at Wikipedia for background information or trivia. In this case, though, had I not read the plot summary, I would have absolutely…
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The Mystic (1925)
The connective tissue among the three films on The Criterion Collection’s box set, Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, is the director’s experience as a circus performer that he incorporated into a series of films such as The Unknown (1927), Freaks (1932), and today’s movie, The Mystic (1925.) This is the least “sideshow” of the trio and…
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Destiny (1921)
October 6, 1921 There are at least a dozen films named, “Destiny,” over a third of them silent. Not that you’d have any trouble finding the “right” one, but just be sure you’re getting the one from 1921, directed in Germany by Fritz Lang. None of the subsequent films are remakes of this one; it’s…
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Woman in the Moon (1929)
Parts of Woman in the Moon are familiar; we’ve seen them in countless science-fiction movies over the years. However, because it was made in 1929, we can hardly accuse it of borrowing from other films. I never realized how often other films borrowed from it and it’s never been on my radar like Fritz Lang’s…
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West of Zanzibar (1928)
Phroso (Lon Chaney) is paralyzed during a scuffle with Crane (Lionel Barrymore,) the man with whom his wife, Anna (Jacqueline Gadsdon) is having an affair and leaving the country. A year later, he finds her dead inside a church with a baby beside her. 18 years later, he’s living West of Zanzibar and creating an…
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Nosferatu (1922)
There seem to be conflicting stories about how open F.W. Murnau was about his sexuality. During promotion for the 2000 film, Shadow of the Vampire, Susan King wrote In the January 4, 2001, issue of the Los Angeles Times, “Murnau was a closet homosexual, but his ‘secret’ came out with his death in a car…
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He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
The 1924 silent classic, He Who Gets Slapped, did not air on TCM as part of its Lon Chaney marathon that I recorded on October 14, 2020. Instead, it aired as part of its circus movie marathon exactly a month later. Wherever you’re able to see it, I highly encourage that you do. For my…
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The Unknown (1927)
Joan Crawford once said that she learned more about acting from watching Lon Chaney work than from anyone else in her career. “It was then I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera and acting.” She appeared with Chaney in The Unknown (1927) during the first…
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The Blackbird (1926)
If you’ve ever wanted to see Lon Chaney, “the Man of a Thousand Faces,” transform into one of his misshapen characters, there are a couple scenes in The Blackbird (1926) that at least give you a glimpse. He quickly pulls his ankle into the air, twisting his leg at the knee, then jerks his shoulder…
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The Unholy Three (1925)
Having been awed and amazed by previous Lon Chaney films that I’ve seen, I was a little disappointed in the one I’d heard most about: The Unholy Three (1925.) Learning now that it was the first collaboration between Chaney and director Tod Browning at MGM, it stands to reason that each film would only become…
Classic Horrors Club 