What I’m watching: A flawed biopic and great werewolf movie

Date: 10/23/2019

What I’m watching: a flawed biopic and a great werewolf movie.

On Blu-ray: Man of a Thousand Faces

Arrow Video has released a remastered Blu-ray edition of the 1957 film “Man of a Thousand Faces,” and while the package of extras is fine, the difficulty is this is a flawed film to start.

“Man of a Thousand Faces” stars James Cagney in the role of Lon Chaney, the great character actor who was known for his wide assortment of roles and his ability to create character make-up. Chaney was perhaps the first person in American film who was a character actor who played leading roles. He was a huge star and a leading man, but not a conventional male lead.

Chaney is best known today for two roles that have been spun into horror roles: Quasimodo the hunchback in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and Erik the Phantom in “Phantom of the Opera.” In fact he played a dizzying array of characters, many of whom had physical disabilities.

Chaney was famously shy about doing press and reportedly said, “Between pictures there is no Lon Chaney.” This, of course, helped fuel the fire of his status as a mysterious figure who created memorable characters.

Chaney died in 1930 after successfully making the leap into sound pictures with the talkie remake of his silent hit “The Unholy Three.” It has been widely speculated that Chaney’s fame and status would have continued through the 1930s. He was only 47 when he passed.

The initial problem for this fictionalized account of Chaney’s rise to fame, his problems with his first marriage and ultimate clashes with his son – who later took the name of Lon Chaney Jr. and achieved his own fame – is that Cagney was playing a 22 year-old Chaney at the age of 56 at the beginning of the film. He is just too old for the part.

Now I love Cagney and will watch anything he is in, but at times this film is painful only because Cagney doesn’t fit the character.

The only problem of the film is the script provides too little insight into Chaney and concentrates more with the issues caused by his first wife Cleva played by Dorothy Malone.

There is little time spent on how he developed his make-ups, which would have been fascinating as this was the era before latex appliances and rubber masks. Chaney literally built the make-ups on himself every day from scratch. All we really see are scenes in which Chaney is sketching the make-ups he is planning.

Make-up artist Bud Westmore used rubber masks on Cagney for two key characters – the hunchback and the Phantom – and the results are painfully inadequate.

My suggestion if you want to learn amore about Chaney, track down the episode of “American Masters” on PBS.

An American Werewolf in London

John Landis is one of my favorite directors and his werewolf film is one of two such films that revitalized the genre – the other being director Joe Dante’s “ The Howling.”

Landis’ film is now the subject of a great re-mastered Blu-ray from Arrow Films complete with many extras including a great documentary about the origins of the genre and the legacy of the classic “The Wolfman” starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Landis essentially updated all of the elements that made the earlier film successful: the tragic hero who can’t accept his cruel fate; the doomed romance; the transformation into a man/animal; and the bloody confrontations that result in his demise.

Landis sets the film in England and added one new element that works very well. While David Naughton played the title role, Griffin Dunne plays his best friend who is killed at the beginning of the film. He keeps returning to Naughton’s character as a rotting corpse telling him that until he breaks the werewolf cycle by killing himself all of his victims will be trapped on the earth as the undead.

Rick Baker’s innovative make-ups are also a star of the film.

Well paced with an expert blend of horror and comedy, the film stands up to time and remains one of the best of its genre.