Indestructible Man

I have to say it, I love this movie. Not just for Lon Chaney but for the whole realistic approach to making the movie adopted by director Jack Pollexfen. Shooting in the real grimy, mean streets of downtown L.A. not only saved money but added a neo-film noir realism to everything. Lon picks up some quick pocket money playing Charles "Butcher" Benton (we are never told how he got the nickname and maybe are better off for not knowing) a career criminal railroaded to the gas chamber by his ex-partners. He is quickly brought back to life by a well meaning scientist (Robert Shayne) who needs a body to test his cancer cure theory. He zaps Chaney with 278,000 volts (how is THAT supposed to cure cancer?) and restores him to life as "a vicious, brutal animal with an almost inconceivable amount of strength". His partners (who have names like "Squeamy" Ellis) are suddenly in big trouble! Editing seems to be all over the map in one instance and it seems scenes were shot but then dropped. For example near the end of the film Lt. Chasen (Casey Adams) talks about Eva Martin (Marion Carr) getting out of the hospital. Why was she there? Stills exist showing Chaney rampaging through a police station and trying to carry Ms. Carr away. Jack Pollexfen also recalled directing a scene where Chaney destroyed a precinct and tore open jail cells looking for one of the men who betrayed him. Why were these scenes missing? Do they still exist? Let's start checking those film vaults! The cast is great, apart from Lon Chaney and Robert Shayne (NEANDERTHAL MAN, INVADERS FROM MARS, etc) there is also Ken Terrell (ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN), Casey Adams (THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD) and don't go for popcorn or you'll miss an unbilled Joe Flynn as a lab assistant. Scriptwriters Vy Russell and Sue Bradford later teamed up again to do the Grade-Z classic THE ATOMIC BRAIN.

... 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.

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.

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.

This is another one of these "not bad" sci-fi/horror/crime/drama/whatever you want to label it 1950s B-films.

The cast actually has some fine actors, men like Casey Adams who starred in "Niagara" with some no-name dames called Marilyn Monroe and Jean Peters, and Lon Chaney, a familiar name among fans of this genre.

The is the tried-and-true revenge story. In this case, a man who is executed is taken from a mortuary to a scientist's lab where the doctor is experiment on cancer research. That doctor, by the way, is another familiar face - that of Inspector Henderson of Superman television fame (Robert Shayne). Oh, the assistant is Joe Flynn, also of TV fame (McHale's Navy.) I'm telling you, this had a pretty good cast.

Well, Charles "The Butcher" Benton (Chaney) is brought back to life, much to the surprise of the doctor and his assistant. "The Butcher" then shows his gratitude by killing those two guys and then grabbing a car and hightailing it from San Francisco down to Los Angeles. He's searching for his shyster lawyer and two other gang members who turned stoolie on him. His mission: kill those three guys.

I won't give away the rest but it's enjoyable to watch to see the "B" floozies in here and the generally schlocky-like story. It's a low-budget fun movie. Yet, despite all that, when it was all over - frankly - I thought this film could have been better, even on a small budget. I wonder if anyone else feels that way.