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Indestructible Man
USA 1956
produced by
Jack Pollexfen for C.G.K. Productions, Allied Artists
directed by Jack Pollexfen
starring Lon Chaney jr, Ross Elliott, Marian Carr, Robert Shayne, Max Showalter (as Casey Adams), Stuart Randall, Ken Terrell, Marjorie Stapp, Peggy Maley, Robert Foulk, Rita Green, Roy Engel, Madge Cleveland
written by Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, music by Albert Glasser
review by
Mike Haberfelner ... for a second opinion by Dale Pierce, Click Here !
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Another of these great 1950's sci-ci-horror-gems:
Lon Chaney jr plays a gangster double-crossed by his former partners
& electrecuted. But as the logic (or shall I say, cliché) of any
good horror-movie goes, death is just the beginning (actually,
another horror-movie-cliché is applied here as well, if
someone's executed, his corpse is bound to be stolen by a scientist
[& accidently brought back to life]).
So, no sooner than a scientist starts experimenting on Chaney (by
electrecuting the corpse once more, actually) to find a cure for cancer,
is the corpse re-animated & is now indestructible (the scene to
prove this, a hypodermic needle bending instead of entering his skin, is
quite a hoot). His mind is set for revenge, so he sets out for a trip
from San Francisco to LA, pretty much killing everyone in sight &
puzzling the police (who of course think him dead). At the end of course
they catch up with him in the sewers where he hid the loot from his last
heist, & chase him through an industrial site where he accidently
electrecutes himself (yet again), but this time for real.
Most of the story is narrated documentary-style using a voice-over by
policeman-hero Ross Elliott, who falls for burlesque dancer Marian Carr
in course of the proceedings.
The no-bullshit, Dragnet-style voice-over narration, while by
no means new, does work pretty well here, adding a strange air of
realism to the extremely over-the-top story.
Lon Chaney jr, stumbling about & looking puzzled, does look
roaringly drunk through much of his performance - which he probably was,
given his (admitted) predilection for the booze, & which might also
explain why he, apart from a small dialogue at the beginning, had no
lines at all. Curiously enough, all that stumbling about &
looking puzzled (there are actually some great & eerie close-ups of
his eyes in this one) does work pretty well for his role - considering he does
play a man just revived from the dead & at odds with the land of the
living around him !
review © by Mike Haberfelner
... and a second opinion by Dale Pierce ...
When this film turned up, Chaney was long into alcoholism and it showed.
Reportedly, there were a number of challenges just to keep him sober enough to
do his daily acenes, because by afternoon, he was usually tanked. In spite of
this, he manages to do a convincing job. While it is not a great film by any
stretch of the mind, it is better than some others from this same time period.
Chaney plays Butcher Benton, a condemned man sentenced to death after a
botched armored car robbery in which he has been left holding the bag for the
crime and his partners have gotten away. He goes to the electric chair,
but due to Frankensteinish experiments, is restored to life as a madman with
tremendous physical strength, which increases via electronic currents, like
the ones that previously did him in.
Lumbering about like Frankenstein's Monster, he kills his
partners who left him to die, one by one. He also comes and goes by making his
way through the tunnels of the sewer system in town.
Eventually, Chaney is cornered and killed, but it doesn't matter as he has
already fixed those rotten pricks who left him to fry.
The odd thing about this film is Chaney's Butcher Benton is no hero and scarcely
sympathetic, but he looks good only because his partners are so repulsive.
Once he has killed these bastards, you no longer root for him and want to see him
finished off as well.
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