User reviews

Pure in Heart: The Life and Legacy of Lon Chaney, Jr. (2010)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good documentary taking a look at the life of Creighton Chaney who would eventually become known as Lon Chaney, Jr. and appear in the 40s as Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the mummy and of course his most famous role as the wolf man. This documentary runs just over half an hour and features interviews with Bob Burns, Joe Dante, John Landis, Kim Newman, Gregory Mank, Sid Haig and Jack Hill among others. If you looking for a full documentary on Chaney then you're going to be disappointed because this here pretty much goes over his days at Universal. We do get a brief discussion of his early pre-fame days and a look at his role as Lenny in OF MICE AND MEN. Jack Hill's SPIDER BABY also gets a good chunk devoted to it, which was a surprise considering this documentary was made by Universal and that film doesn't belong to the studio. For the most part this is fairly entertaining as long as you don't expect something that looks at his entire career. I enjoyed hearing from those interviewed as they share some pretty good stories about Lon and it's always great to hear the opinions of people who admire. It's also great fun when you know someone has the same passion as you do and this adds more to hearing their comments. The short running time means quite a bit of footage isn't discussed but I do wish they had perhaps at least took a look at some of his other horror films. There's brief mention of him doing a lot of character work but hopefully one day we'll get a fuller documentary on the man.