Lon Chaney, Jr. Movies
The son of actors Lon Chaney and Cleva Creighton, Creighton Tull Chaney was raised in an atmosphere of Spartan strictness by his father. He refused to allow Creighton to enter show business, wanting his son to prepare for a more "practical" profession; so young Chaney trained to be plumber, and worked a variety of relatively menial jobs despite his father's fame. After Lon Sr.... (read more) died in 1930, Creighton entered movies with an RKO contract, but nothing much happened until, by his own recollection, he was "starved" into changing his name to Lon Chaney Jr. He would spend the rest of his life competing with his father's reputation as The Man With a Thousand Faces, hoping against hope to someday top Lon Sr. professionally. Unfortunately, he would have little opportunity to do this in the poverty-row quickie films that were his lot in the '30s, nor was his tenure (1937-1940) as a 20th Century Fox contract player artistically satisfying.
Hoping to convince producers that he was a fine actor in his own right, Chaney appeared as the mentally retarded giant Lennie in a Los Angeles stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. This led to his being cast as Lennie in the 1939 film version -- which turned out to be a mixed blessing. His reviews were excellent, but the character typed him in the eyes of many, forcing him to play variations of it for the next 30 years (which was most amusingly in the 1947 Bob Hope comedy My Favorite Brunette). In 1939, Chaney was signed by Universal Pictures, for which his father had once appeared in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925); Universal was launching a new cycle of horror films, and hoped to cash in on the Chaney name. Billing Lon Jr. as "the screen's master character actor," Universal cast him as Dynamo Dan the Electric Man in Man Made Monster (1941), a role originally intended for Boris Karloff. That same year, Chaney starred as the unfortunate lycanthrope Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man, the highlight of which was a transformation sequence deliberately evoking memories of his father's makeup expertise. (Unfortunately, union rules were such than Lon Jr. was not permitted to apply his own makeup). Universal would recast Chaney as the Wolf Man in four subsequent films, and cast him as the Frankenstein Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and the title role in Son of Dracula (1943). Chaney also headlined two B-horror series, one based upon radio's Inner Sanctum anthology, and the other a spin-off from the 1932 film The Mummy. Chaney occasionally got a worthwhile role in the '50s, notably in the films of producer/director Stanley Kramer (High Noon, Not As a Stranger, and especially The Defiant Ones), and he co-starred in the popular TV series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans. For the most part, however, the actor's last two decades as a performer were distinguished by a steady stream of cheap, threadbare horror films, reaching a nadir with such fare as Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967). In the late '60s, Chaney fell victim to the same throat cancer that had killed his father, although publicly he tried to pass this affliction off as an acute case of laryngitis. Unable to speak at all in his last few months, he still grimly sought out film roles, ending his lengthy film career with Dracula vs. Frankenstein(1971). He died in 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Terror in the Pharaoh's Tomb
2007
Famed archeologist Rick Banning has mysteriously vanished after reports surfaced claiming that he had unearthed the mythical lost city of Lemuria, and now it's up to fellow...
Film House Fever
1986
This compilation tape is a collection of clips and trailers from low-budget, cult-type movies. The "framing" device of having two guys on a couch (one of whom is future cult-icon...
Into the Night
R 1985
Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She...
The Hollywood Collection: The Horror of it All
1983
Directed by Philip Martell, music director of such horror films as Snake Woman (1961) and Die, Monster, Die! (1964), this documentary recounts the history of horror...
Time to Run
PG 1974
The protagonist is young runaway Barbara Sigel (a Golden Globe nominee for her performance in this film), who has a mad-on against the world. Refusing help from anyone over 30,...
Dracula vs. Frankenstein
PG 1971
A slapdash epic of bad filmmaking geared strictly toward drive-in audiences, Dracula vs. Frankenstein has gone on to achieve cult status thanks to its sheer ineptness and...
The Female Bunch
R 1969
An utterly bizarre psychedelic exploitation-western, The Female Bunch tells the tale of five women who live on a ranch with no men. Russ Tamblyn can be seen having his face...
Buckskin
1968
Chaddock (Barry Sullivan) is the straight-shooting marshall of Gloryhole, Montana. Wealthy rancher Rep Marlowe (Wendell Corey) practically owns the town by way of his...
Fireball Jungle
1968
Cars are crashing everywhere in this action film that tells the story of Nero Sagittarius, a mobster, and his partner Cateye Meares are determined break into the Southern...
Hillbillys in a Haunted House
G 1967
Horror, comedy, and country corn combine when country singers Woody Weathrby and Boots Malone get caught in a big storm en route to the Nashville Jamboree and end up taking...
Blood of Dracula's Castle
1967
Dracula carries on his blood-drinking tradition in modern-day California, joined by his bride in a castle into which an unsuspecting couple have just moved. (Talk about...
Gallery of Horror
1967
Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors; Return from the Past; The Blood Suckers; Gallery of Horrors. No, that's not a quadruple feature at the Highway 194 Twin Drive-In. All...
Welcome to Hard Times
1967
Long before he scored with the epic Ragtime, novelist E.L. Doctorow wrote a minor novel upon which this stark 1967 film is based. It was adapted for the screen by veteran...
Johnny Reno
1966
Johnny Reno (Dana Andrews) is a US Marshall who is bushwhacked by outlaws on his way to Stone Junction, Kansas. Joe Connors (Tom Drake) and his brother Ab (Dale Van...
Apache Uprising
1966
Jim Walker Rory Calhoun is a hero who fights Indians and crooks who plan a series of stagecoach robberies in this routine western. He defends the honor of a woman (Corinne...
The Monkees: The Monkees in a Ghost Town
1966
Stranded in a deserted western town, the Monkees are captured by a couple of gangsters named Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr. and George (Len Lesser). While our heroes plan a...
Black Spurs
1965
In this western, a world-weary bounty hunter begins working for an avaricious crook who wants to destroy the good name of a little town so that the railroad will be built across...
Town Tamer
1965
Adapting his own novel, Frank Gruber penned the screenplay for the A.C. Lyles production Town Tamer. Veteran filmmaker Leslie Selander directs an equally veteran cast...
Young Fury
1965
In this western, a gunslinger runs from the Dawson gang and decides to return home to the wife he abandoned many years before. There he finds that his infant son has grown into a...
Face of the Screaming Werewolf
1965
Another import horror chop-job courtesy of producer Jerry Warren, this time with a recognizable American star -- sort of. Lon Chaney, Jr. returns to Wolf Man mode once...