It's hard to know where to begin discussing this odd little film, a medium budget MGM production with a streamlined jungle aesthetic that's reminiscent of both the more visually audacious film "White Shadows in the South Seas" produced by Thalberg at MGM the same year as well as the cleaner and more claustrophobic jungle setting of Thalberg's 1932 production "Red Dust." In the latter film, Clark Gable played a character who was sort of a combination of Phroso "Dead Legs" as played in this film by Lon Chaney and "Doc" as played in this film by Warner Baxter.
Phroso is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down in a fight with the philandering Mr. Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After he finds his wife dead in a church, he swears vengeance on Crane and his descendants including the baby daughter Crane had with his wife. Phroso's elaborate plan includes stealing Mr. Crane's ivory in Africa and unveiling the ruined daughter (Mary Nolan), whom he has placed in a whorehouse to get a proper "education." While keeping the daughter prisoner at his jungle hideout, Phroso forces the daughter to become an alcohol addict while trying to convince the local natives that he is a wizard. Everything builds up to a fiery climax in which Lon Chaney dons a witch-doctor costume and does a bizarre dance to prevent the cannibal natives from burning the daughter alive. There is also a major (and fairly predictable) revelation about her true identity which triggers the by-1928 typical Chaney sacrifice theme.
As some critics at the time noted, the theme of self-sacrifice and masochism as portrayed by Chaney and Browning was getting a little bit stale by the time this film was made. It feels like a directionless film, as if the film itself basically exists as an excuse for Chaney and Barrymore to engage in an acting competition as larger than life characters. Another criticism which could very fairly be leveled at the film is that it's depiction of the native people is incredibly patronizing -- the natives for example are fooled easily by a man dressed in a silly monster costume (former pro-wrestler Kalla Pasha) into dropping their ivory so that Phroso's compadres can steal it. Only their ancient leader sees through Phroso's tricks. Tod Browning's direction is aimless and unimaginative, but he does create the seedy atmosphere that he was most famous for. And the main reason to watch the movie anyway is to see Chaney's performance -- he doesn't disappoint but he also doesn't do anything particularly new for him. In my opinion he's working here just a little bit too much in his comfort zone. He's convincingly psychotic and vengeful and then eventually he manages to turn the audience's emotions to pity and understanding, but by the time this movie came out that was starting to be a cliché in his films. In order for it to continue to work there needed to be an interesting variation and this film didn't really provide one. One thing that was interesting however was the fact that even after Phroso changed his attitude about the daughter (after the big revelation), he still continued to mistreat Doc and the others. So you could read the ending less as a "conversion" than as merely the re-direction of his psychosis. Tod Browning was famous for his bitter and sometimes ironic endings and it feels to me like this is how he intended us to read it.
I want to make sure not to leave the other performers out -- Mary Nolan had a striking face and a decent talent for acting. She's got a pretty juicy role because she gets to look so awful for most of the movie and she gets to play kind of a desperate woman which you don't see very often in post-code films. Warner Baxter is a good solid actor and his work here showed promise that he later fulfilled. Lionel Barrymore gave one of his more restrained performances here, choosing to underplay to Chaney in their big confrontation scene. I like how completely unredeemed his character is -- he manages to make the character somewhat interesting even though ultimately we care little when he's killed off-screen.
Unfortunately this film doesn't rise to the levels of the better Chaney/Browning films like "The Unholy Three" and "The Unknown" but it does manage to create a grittier jungle look than most "exotic" adventure films, it features memorably twisted and sadistic characters particularly from Chaney, and it explores some themes and topics that would have been verboten in the 1930s jungle films so it is kind of a curiosity.
Phroso is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down in a fight with the philandering Mr. Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After he finds his wife dead in a church, he swears vengeance on Crane and his descendants including the baby daughter Crane had with his wife. Phroso's elaborate plan includes stealing Mr. Crane's ivory in Africa and unveiling the ruined daughter (Mary Nolan), whom he has placed in a whorehouse to get a proper "education." While keeping the daughter prisoner at his jungle hideout, Phroso forces the daughter to become an alcohol addict while trying to convince the local natives that he is a wizard. Everything builds up to a fiery climax in which Lon Chaney dons a witch-doctor costume and does a bizarre dance to prevent the cannibal natives from burning the daughter alive. There is also a major (and fairly predictable) revelation about her true identity which triggers the by-1928 typical Chaney sacrifice theme.
As some critics at the time noted, the theme of self-sacrifice and masochism as portrayed by Chaney and Browning was getting a little bit stale by the time this film was made. It feels like a directionless film, as if the film itself basically exists as an excuse for Chaney and Barrymore to engage in an acting competition as larger than life characters. Another criticism which could very fairly be leveled at the film is that it's depiction of the native people is incredibly patronizing -- the natives for example are fooled easily by a man dressed in a silly monster costume (former pro-wrestler Kalla Pasha) into dropping their ivory so that Phroso's compadres can steal it. Only their ancient leader sees through Phroso's tricks. Tod Browning's direction is aimless and unimaginative, but he does create the seedy atmosphere that he was most famous for. And the main reason to watch the movie anyway is to see Chaney's performance -- he doesn't disappoint but he also doesn't do anything particularly new for him. In my opinion he's working here just a little bit too much in his comfort zone. He's convincingly psychotic and vengeful and then eventually he manages to turn the audience's emotions to pity and understanding, but by the time this movie came out that was starting to be a cliché in his films. In order for it to continue to work there needed to be an interesting variation and this film didn't really provide one. One thing that was interesting however was the fact that even after Phroso changed his attitude about the daughter (after the big revelation), he still continued to mistreat Doc and the others. So you could read the ending less as a "conversion" than as merely the re-direction of his psychosis. Tod Browning was famous for his bitter and sometimes ironic endings and it feels to me like this is how he intended us to read it.
I want to make sure not to leave the other performers out -- Mary Nolan had a striking face and a decent talent for acting. She's got a pretty juicy role because she gets to look so awful for most of the movie and she gets to play kind of a desperate woman which you don't see very often in post-code films. Warner Baxter is a good solid actor and his work here showed promise that he later fulfilled. Lionel Barrymore gave one of his more restrained performances here, choosing to underplay to Chaney in their big confrontation scene. I like how completely unredeemed his character is -- he manages to make the character somewhat interesting even though ultimately we care little when he's killed off-screen.
Unfortunately this film doesn't rise to the levels of the better Chaney/Browning films like "The Unholy Three" and "The Unknown" but it does manage to create a grittier jungle look than most "exotic" adventure films, it features memorably twisted and sadistic characters particularly from Chaney, and it explores some themes and topics that would have been verboten in the 1930s jungle films so it is kind of a curiosity.