Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

poe-48833 THE MONSTER just happens to be one of the finest LOOKING Fright Films of The Silent Era: every shot is beautifully composed and lit and much of the imagery is truly striking (all of the Monstrous characters LOOK like Monsters, and each has his own distinctively individual persona). The effects are outstanding, too: at one point, a character is swept off his feet by the wind and down a staircase and out a door into the waiting arms of another character. This sequence is best SEEN and not DESCRIBED: mere words don't do it justice, believe me. Chaney is as sinister as he ever was, and his familiar face lends its own creepiness to the goings-on. Highly recommended.

kidboots Lon Chaney, like Edward G. Robinson, was more than happy to parody his image. The surprising thing with Chaney is that it came so early in his "horror" career. This was his second MGM movie - straight after "He Who Gets Slapped", which is probably why it wasn't that popular. A big problem was that audiences of the time found it so hard to understand a movie poking fun at a genre that only came into existence a few years earlier. Roland West was the perfect director for it but although he directed a few atmospheric thrillers like "The Bat", "The Monster" and the excellent early talkie "Alibi", his output was sparse and by 1931 he had directed his last film "Corsair" with his good friend Chester Morris and current girl friend Thelma Todd.Adapted from the play by Crane Wilbur (earlier the hero of "The Perils of Pauline" serial) it had opened in New York in 1922 with a respectable 101 performances. The movie starts out creepily enough. "A human monster watched with cat like eyes for a victim"!!! Then John Bowman, the town's wealthy farmer is run off the road with the old "smoke and mirrors" trick and disappears!!! For the next half hour the film becomes a small town comedy - it seems everybody's a detective and has an opinion, none more so than Johnny Goodlittle (Johnny Arthur) who has just earned his detective diploma and has found a clue at the crime scene - a scribbled message for help with the name of a disused sanitarian - but instead he becomes the town laughing stock.No wonder audiences felt shortchanged. Lon Chaney didn't make his appearance until the 30 minute mark and the two male leads were pretty under whelming. Johnny Arthur, as the put upon hero would not have caught any small town girl's eye and basically played a mincing milquetoast, a role he perfected in the talkies and Hallam Cooley was pretty forgettable as his rival. The last hour takes place at the sanitarian where the lunatics have taken over the asylum and as usual Lon Chaney puts everyone else in the shade. He plays Dr. Ziska and he brilliantly overplays it to the hilt - with his weird bunch of henchmen - "You are trying to make me MAD - and I have an operation to perform"!!! and as one body hurtles down the chute "You sent me a MAN - and you know I wanted a woman"!!! I suppose more sophisticated movie patrons of the time would have enjoyed it but most were probably expecting (with a title like "The Monster") another "Phantom of the Opera". Gertrude Olmstead, as Betty, was a nice actress who was more than happy to retire when she met the love of her life Robert Z. Leonard who was recovering from his years of being married to "Queen of the Divas", Mae Murray.

Michael_Elliott Monster, The (1925) ** (out of 4) The teaming of legend Lon Chaney and director Roland West sadly ends up being a very disappointing entry in the "old dark house" genre, which was still quite new at the time this was released. In the film, Chaney plays a mad scientist trying to figure out the secrets of life in an abandoned asylum. Wannabe detective (Johnny Arthur) winds up at the asylum with the woman (Gertrude Olmstead) he loves and the two try to destroy the scientist and his evil ways. THE MONSTER is a major disappointment that doesn't appear to know what type of film it wants to be. Considering Chaney is given top-billing you'd think that the director and studio would want a horror film or at least some sort of dark mystery but they only partially give us that. For some reason the film contains a lot of comedy relief that really sinks everything. The film starts off with the wannabe detective, a store clerk in reality, constantly being pushed around and of course he plans to show them all one day. We get another guy thrown into the mix because he appears to be more "manly" and of course these two both want the same woman. This silly love story never comes full circle and it really just adds minutes to the running time and the film certainly didn't need that. There's full comedy scattered throughout the film and it's a bit of a mystery why they bothered. I mean, you do have the Man of a Thousand Faces and you do have him playing the role of a mad scientist so did they really think people wanted to see this type of comedy? Even stranger is that Chaney gets top-billing yet he doesn't appear until the mid-way point and sadly both Arthur and Olmstead aren't strong enough to carry the material. Once Chaney does get on screen he delivers another fine performance and while there's not any real make-up, I did enjoy that head full of white hair. Chaney was always good at playing mad and he does a good job here but it's a shame he's wasted. West's direction is pretty much all over the place and it's clear that he couldn't do comedy. The "old dark house" stuff is a tad bit better but it's still far from what he did with THE BAT.

MartinHafer This is a very strange Lon Chaney film due to the plot as well as the focus of the film--which is generally not on Chaney but on a trio who get sucked into his maniacal world.The film begins with a silly plot device. A caped madman raises and lowers a giant mirror across the road to cause an accident. However, when the locals investigate, the doctor who was driving the car is missing! The film then focuses on a young wimpy man who wants to be a detective. He tries to get the people to listen to him and his theories about what actually happened, but no one listens---even though he's just completed a home-study course on how to be a detective! This is all pretty strange, I know.Later this guy plus a couple all get stranded out by the mental institution outside of town. Considering it's raining, they look for shelter or accidentally stumble into a trapdoor leading to the asylum in one case. Once inside, they wished they hadn't come it, as the place is a bizarre place--full of strange trap doors, hidden rooms and chambers and filled with characters that looked quite at home in a Frankenstein film! The doctor in charge of the asylum (Chaney) bids them welcome and offers to put them up for the night. But once steel doors spring over all the windows, they realize they are trapped and have no choice but to stay. And, naturally, it turns out that the doctor is NOT a doctor but a madman who has taken over the asylum. So, it's up to our daring detective to spring to action and save everyone and solve the mystery.This truly is one of the strangest silent films I've ever seen, but its strangeness and all the cool gadgets and overacting make this a fun film to watch--though not exactly cerebral or subtle! In many ways, it reminds me of the silent classic THE CAT AND THE CANARY--another scary old house film from the silent era. Plus, in the 1970s, the plot for THE MONSTER was reworked into the very cheesy and not worth watching schlock-film, THE MANSION OF MADNESS. THE CAT AND THE CANARY is worth seeing, MANSION OF MADNESS definitely isn't.