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Rating: - Classic vintage macabre
Though this film was made a few years before Lon Chaney became a huge star, when he was still known primarily as a very good character actor, it easily seems like his best surviving pre-stardom film. In spite of his stardom still being a little bit away, he was given the lead role, and did such a wonderful job with it. I think his performance as the villainous double amputee Blizzard (what a great character name!) ranks up there as being just as compelling and great as his performance in a film like 'The Phantom of the Opera,' 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame,' or 'Tell It to the Marines.' (It's really amazing to think about the physical pain he put himself through to play a double amputee, in an era long before CGI, sacrificing so much for the sake of his craft.) As in all of his films, though he's playing a horrible villain, the type of person you'd ordinarily be afraid of, avoid, or make fun of, he brings depth and sensitivity to the role. Even though Blizzard is a very wicked man, he's not totally inhuman, and does display more human emotions a couple of times. Underneath the exterior of the tough unbending criminal mastermind, there does exist the heart of someone who isn't completely evil. He's also a lot more interesting than just about all of the other characters, because of this depth and complexity. After all, when was Lon not great?

As a young boy, Blizzard's legs were unnecessarily amputated following a traffic accident, and when he was coming out of the operation, he overheard the doctor and his young assistant arguing about how this was an unnecessary operation. Twenty-seven years later, he's an evil criminal overlord on San Francisco's Barbary Coast, obsessed not only with building his criminal empire and taking control of the entire city but also with finally getting revenge on the doctor who ruined his life. He gets his chance when he sees an advertisement in the paper (under the terribly old-fashioned "Male Help Wanted" section of the help wanted ads) for a model to sit for a sculpture depicting Satan. The young sculptor, Barbara, is none other than the doctor's daughter. Blizzard's plans for revenge soon come to include Barbara's boyfriend Wilmot, who is rather old-school and wants Barbara to give up her career as an artist to marry him and have a family. While Blizzard is plotting to seduce Barbara and get her father to cut off Wilmot's legs so they can be grafted onto him, all while still hatching an elaborate plot to take over the city, he's also falling for Rose, a woman who was originally hired to investigate his evil plans. Because Blizzard isn't totally evil, Rose comes to develop feelings for him as well, and starts having second thoughts about ratting on him. All of this makes for a great vintage macabre film, complete with a very creepy atmospheric soundtrack. It starts off well and just gets even better and better, more and more intense and dramatic, as it goes along. Unfortunately, there's an incredibly ridiculous and implausible plot twist at the end (which was foreshadowed in the beginning of the film), which probably seemed silly even by 1920 standards. It leads to what I consider a disappointing ending, but everything that comes prior to the final reel is so wonderful that the lame ending doesn't cancel it out.

Bonus features are plentiful and include trailers, the surviving footage of the 1919 film 'The Miracle Man,' a photo gallery, information on the novel on which the film was based (and which helps to clear up some confusions and questions the viewer might have, like why those women are making all of those hats), the 1914 short 'By the Sun's Rays,' and an essay by Chaney biographer Michael Blake, who also provides a short video tour of Lon's makeup case and the costume he used in this film.

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