L'Homme indestructible

... is the best way I can describe the flavor of this film, which is not nearly as bad as its current low rating would have you believe. In fact, if you like 50's and 60's Allied Artist horror on the cheap, I think you'll like this one. Remember Allied Artists was a poverty row outfit, and they could usually afford just one star. In this case it is Lon Chaney Jr. as armed robber Charles Benton, betrayed by two other bank robbers who turned state's evidence at the request of sleazy lawyer Paul Lowe, who wants a fall guy for the robbery and a chance at a smaller split for the 600K payroll heist for which he hired the three thieves in the first place. Benton realizes all of this, and the last thing he says before he is executed is that he is going to get the three who betrayed him.

Now the lawyer isn't nervous at all, but the two other robbers think maybe Benton took some of the money - which at the time of his death only he knew the location - and hired a hit man for them. What they are definitely not expecting is for a couple of scientists to pay off the morgue attendant at the prison to hand over Benton's body. The pair are experimenting with electricity as a cure for cancer and need a fresh human body for their next test. Well "It's Alive!" turns out to be instantaneous tragedy for this pair instead of temporary triumph as in the case of Victor Frankenstein. Benton is unexpectedly brought back to life with a molecular structure that can't be penetrated by any substance, vocal chords burned out so he can't speak, superhuman strength, and with a desire to pick up where he left off and kill the three guys who betrayed him. I'll let you watch and see how this all pans out.

The Dragnet comparison comes from the voice over of police Lt. Dick Chasen who is narrating the whole story. With Allied Artist horror you really don't expect much in the way of great acting or good art design, but more could have been done for the continuity and even the dialogue. For instance after Benton returns to life the narrator calls him a "Monster Made Man". Huh? What monster made him? I believe he meant to say "Man Made Monster". The narrator talks about how Benton wants to save killing crooked lawyer Paul for last, but then later after he kills the first of his fellow robbers he goes looking for the lawyer. In the jail house conversation Paul was trying to get the location of the hidden loot out of Benton who refuses to tell, but later Paul has somehow figured out how to get the loot but just can't open the strongbox it is in. Benton is established as a character who just wants to kill the three who betrayed him, yet mid-film he shows up in the middle of some suburb attacking and killing random people. Usually the best horror establishes the "monster" as someone for whom you have some sympathy and thus ambivalent feelings. Here Benton is pretty much just a mute killing machine after he is revived.

I'd recommend this one, just realize you are dealing with an outfit that didn't have much in the way of funding to begin with and try to meet it half-way.

I cherish a great deal of respect for the late Lon Chaney Jr. His acting career must not have been easy, since he's the son of his father (Lon Chaney Sr.; the father of silent cinema) and since he always somewhat stood in the shadows of fellow horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Chaney Jr. starred in several really good horror gems ("Spider Baby", "House of Dracula") but also in many overlooked B-movies like this "Indestructible Man". The plot is more ambitious than you'd think Chaney fits into his role perfectly. He plays the murderous gangster Charles "Butcher" Benton, sentenced to death and taking the secret of a hidden loot (worth over 600.000$) with him in his grave. He swears vengeance on his attorney who double-crossed him and he's offered the opportunity when an experimenting scientist accidentally brings the Butcher back from the dead. Even though filmed on a minuscule budget, "Indestructible Man" is a very entertaining crime/horror movie with fairly good acting and a couple of nice special effects. The plotting is rather incompetent (for example: though the shock, Butcher loses his vocal cords but his memory stays intact...) but you're not supposed to take it too seriously, anyway. Chaney's eerie madman-charisma is more than enough to make "Indestructible Man" a worthwhile effort, if you ask me. This is just one of those many well-intended 50's films that got wrongfully ridiculed by MST3K.

Lon Chaney, Jr. stars in this most low budget science fiction/noir thriller about a man who comes back from the dead with no voice and more of a one track mind that Moose Malloy in Murder My Sweet. His lawyer Ross Elliott masterminded an armored car robbery in which the guards were killed and Chaney and two accomplices got away with over $600,000.00 dollars of which only Chaney knows where it's hid. The two accomplices turn state's evidence and pin the whole thing on Chaney at Elliott's direction. Some way, some how, Chaney's going to get these rats.

When scientists Robert Shayne and Joe Flynn make an under the table deal for the body, they shoot it with electricity, Frankenstein style, and Chaney comes to life, even though his vocal cords have burned to a cinder and has no voice. His skin and bones have become almost like Superman, he's truly an Indestructible Man.

The film is narrated by Max Showalter the detective on the original armored car heist. He can't believe it, but it's true, Chaney's back from the dead and leaving a murderous trail behind him. Bullets bounce off him just like Superman, even a flame thrower just burns him, and a bazooka only slows him down a bit.

There are two female roles of importance, Marian Carr as Chaney's girl friend as described by the papers and her best friend and fellow stripper Peggy Maley who always has a good wisecrack in any film she's ever in.

You can't rate the film all that high, the production values are almost non-existent. But Indestructible Man is not all that bad as a thriller. Chaney is mesmerizing and frightening in a performance that has no dialog except at the very beginning of the film. The final chase scene through the sewers is borrowed liberally from The Third Man.

If you're going to borrow, do it from the best and Indestructible Man while it will never win any awards, isn't anything the cast and crew have to be ashamed of.

I am not really sure why the film has an overall score of 3.2 at this time--it's really NOT a bad film. And, for the budget behind it, the people responsible for INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN should be proud of the final product.

Oddly enough, this is a film that doesn't easily fit in one genre. The best way to categorize it is a "sci-fi/horror film with strong Film Noir overtones". Why sci-fi/horror? Well, the plot involves a scientist accidentally reviving a man who was executed. Upon being revived, the man finds he is practically indestructible and goes on a killing spree--to kill those who framed him as well as any other person who just happens to get in his way. Now as to the Noir aspects, the film is shown in a semi-documentary style like many Film Noir movies and features the usual narration--this time by the detective working on the case. In this sense, it's reminiscent of Noir films such as HE WALKED BY NIGHT and T-MEN.

Despite the merging of these genres, I think the film worked because the acting was decent and the writing showed imagination and a slight Noir edge to it. Considering two of my favorite genres are Noir and 50s horror/sci-fi, it's not at all surprising I liked it. About the only negative was the stupid and needless inter-cutting of closeups of Lon Chaney's rheumy-looking eyes (i.e., watery and perhaps looking like he was drunk--a distinct possibility in Chaney's case). This just looked cheap and seeing the same pointless closeup shot again and again was sloppy.

MORD39 RATING: **1/2 out of ****

I'm partial to this guilty favorite since I saw it hundreds of times as a youngster on television. Even so, it's just plain fun as Lon Chaney knocks off the traitors who sent him to death with their treachery. The L.A. locations are terrific, and the Dragnet-style narration adds spice to the proceedings. It's speedy and nostalgic, very much a "fifties" film.

As for the Roan DVD, I'm sorry to say that it has not been restored and is a disappointment. I have had much trouble acquiring the "perfect" version of this film, even though I've had it on VHS from FOUR(!) different companies, as well as on TNT. Some day I hope this personal fave of mine will get a clean and proper transfer on disc.