Product Description
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In a role that established him as one of the most
dynamically terrifying performers of the silent screen, Lon
Chaney stars in the Penalty, a grotesque thriller form director
Wallace Worsley (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). When an
incompetent doctor amputates the legs of a young boy, he has no
idea that the youth will grow up to be the immoral and embittered
Blizzard, a criminal mastermind who orchestrates a bizarre and
heinous plot to avenge himself upon his malefactor. The Penalty
teems with irony and sexual menace as Blizzard befriends the
surgeon's daughter and serves as an artist's model for her
sculptural rendition of Satan, waiting for his moment to show the
depth of his demonic desires. In playing the devious Blizzard,
Chaney tightly harnessed his legs within a pair of leather
stumps, flawlessly rendering the physical disfigurement that so
profoundly echoes the misshapen mind that drives this sadistic
character toward his violent destiny. As Chaney biographer
Michael Blake says, "One has to wonder if the intensity Lon
brought to this role might have been due in part to the pain
produced by his harness." This special Kino on Video edition is
loaded with supplemental features which better one's
understanding of the Penalty, Lon Chaney and the great lengths to
which he went to craft such a feverishly villainous performances.
.com
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Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, was no mere
makeup wizard, as this dark, deviant crime drama shows. Strapping
his legs into a painful leather harness to play a double-amputee
underworld kingpin, Chaney scrambles through the film like a
human spider weaving his criminal web across San Francisco with
equal parts seduction and terror. Crippled as child by an
incompetent doctor, he dedicates his life to vengeance in a
double-barreled plot that will bring both the city and the doctor
(now an honored physician) to their knees. Director Wallace
Worsley (who later collaborated with Chaney on his legendary
Hunchback of Notre Dame) peppers the busy plot with bizarre
touches of sexual menace and sadism, and he creates a wicked
atmosphere of corruption and murder that implicates every
character. Even the absurd twist of a happy ending can't wipe
that away. --Sean Axmaker
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Set Contains:
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Kino's DVD features a fine window-boxed transfer from a
good-looking master (with some scenes taken from inferior source
materials) and a moody modern synthesizer and percussion score by
Michael Polher. Supplements include the 1914 single-reel Western
By the Sun's Rays (a badly preserved and clichéd curiosity with
Chaney as a sneak villain), a short video tour of Chaney's makeup
box and costume from The Penalty, two and a half minutes of
surviving footage from the lost Chaney film The Miracle Man, an
essay by Chaney biographer Michael F. Blake, two trailers, and
various stills, photos, and production materials. --Sean Axmaker
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