Code of the Freaks, Lon Chaney, and screen disability

There's a fascinating documentary called Code of the Freaks which interviews disability activists -- including people with various disabilities -- about their reactions to depictions of disability in cinema, and the underlying sociocultural attitudes these reveal. It does for disability what another favourite film-centric documentary, Reel Injun, does for representations of Indigenous peoples, using cinema as an entry point for a wider discussion, and contains some very intriguing surprises, like Mat Fraser -- who acts in American Horror Story: Freak Show and Loudermilk, and who I gather has collaborated with Steve Ignorant at some point (!) -- praising, apparently, Tod Browning's Freaks; it's a film I have great fondness for, but it's weirdly liberating to discover that it is also admired by people with congenital birth defects (Mat has defects caused by Thalidomide; hear his song "Thalidomide Ninja" here; who knew that "Krip Hop" was a thing? A more recent project of Mat's here. Perfect touring partner for Blind Marc, eh?).

Much as I enjoy it, Freaks is only incidental to the initial impetus for this post, which was my newfound appreciation for Lon Chaney. Chaney is not in Freaks -- though if I recall, recently deceased horror film historian David J. Skal talks in a commentary on the recent Criterion set about how Chaney was meant to be in the film, but died before it could be made. A Lon Chaney film does appear in Code of the Freaks, but with less love: The Penalty. This film can be viewed for free via Kanopy, and is a gripping silent thriller about a man who, injured in a car accident as a boy and subjected to a wrongful double amputation of his legs, grows up to be a criminal mastermind, with a scheme to force the doctor who mutilated him to graft another man's legs onto his, so he can lead a series of bank robberies. There's also something about a sweatshop of women that Chaney (or the character he plays, who has taken the name Blizzard) is forcing to make hats. I may have nodded off when they explained what the hats were about (but give me a break, I've got COVID).

Chaney is remarkable in the film. His villainy is so motivated, his character so compelling, charismatic and rich, that you fall under his spell, want him to succeed on some level (and the guy whose legs he wants to steal is a bit of a prick, anyhow). And the physical dimensions of the role are quite something. Against the advice of doctors, Chaney wore contraptions on his knees that allowed him to run on his "stumps," with his actual legs tied back, which could not have been comfortable. He sells his leglessness, so much so that there are fantasy scenes included in the film that show him be-legged, post-surgery, so that audiences would not make the mistake that he was an actual amputee. It gives you a sense of his commitment to his craft: moments where he does things like leap from a height and land on his knees look like they would have been extraordinarily painful, but he doesn't wince, doesn't flinch. I cannot imagine, no matter what prosthetic was on my legs, jumping from a height and landing on my knees, with my legs tied back. 

The film is not given much love in Code of the Freaks, being grouped in passing with films like Dr. No, where disability is connected to a desire for revenge on society. These films are a bit less offensive to the various commenters than movies where disabled characters serve to uplift or transform "normally abled" characters, sometimes ultimately dying so that the true hero can be redeemed. Gattaca is the most offensive example, the suicide scene in which is interestingly compared to that in The Elephant Man; sadly, an old favourite film of mine, Cutter's Way, probably also fits the pattern, in that Alex Cutter (John Heard, giving Chaney a run for his money in terms of screen disfigurements) ultimately dies so that his friend can be redeemed (Cutter has his share of a desire for revenge on society, too, but differs from the disabled characters in Dr. No and The Penalty in that you're meant to root for him, much less ambivalently than in the case of the Chaney film). 

A Lon Chaney film that is not mentioned in Code of the Freaks, but could have been, is The Unknown, which does have an element of disability in it, though it's not without a degree of complication. Regarded as the best of his collaborations with Browning, it's a silent film, featuring a very young Joan Crawford, with Chaney as an armless circus knife-thrower, Alonso the Armless. Chaney again sells his armlessness, though was not himself actually able to throw knives with his feet; the scenes where he is shown doing this are faked with the help of an actual armless knife-thrower, Paul Desmuke. 

The reason the film is not included in Code of the Freaks may well be that Alonso the Armless (spoiler alert) is not actually armless; he's a criminal who is disguising himself as armless to evade capture, in part because he has a unique deformity which will allow him to be easily identified: he has double-thumbs on both hands (a birth defect, sure, but not a particularly severe one). Presumably the bindings you see Alonso wearing in the film are, in fact, the actual bindings that Chaney wore to give the impression of his armlessness, which, again, he sells quite well. I'm guessing that for scenes where he is shown sipping tea with his feet, Paul Desmuke is hiding offscreen, extending a foot up? 

The story of the film is quite something -- a circus thriller in which Chaney vies for the love of Crawford, who has a phobia of having men's hands on her, which her strongman suitor (another performer in the circus) does not realize, setting him at a disadvantage. Chaney would seem her ideal partner, except his armlessness is just a front (oh, and he murdered her father, too, but that's another matter). Like The Penalty, Chaney hatches a plot to possibly deprive his rival of his limbs, in a rather stunning climax in which his arms are bound to two horses, running in opposite directions; also like The Penalty, though he is a villain, he is the film's central character and primary identification, which is kind of interesting in and of itself. 

There are only three Lon Chaney Sr. movies I've seen now, the third being Outside the Law, another Tod Browning film wherein Chaney plays a villain, though a bit unlike The Unknown in that you're not meant to root for him. Chaney actually plays a second role in the film, too -- a virtuous Chinese coolie who spies on the villain and helps our protagonists. It's interesting that the film has a positive attitude towards its Chinese characters, while making of Chaney a rather repugnant yellowface caricature. At least he's a good guy!

So I've become quite a Lon Chaney fan -- eventually, I'll get to The Hunchback of Notre Dame (also mentioned in Code of the Freaks) and The Phantom of the Opera (that might be in there, too, I forget). I feel like I've been remiss as a horror fan in not taking in more of his work! 

More pressingly, though, I've got to see American Horror Story: Freak Show. (And maybe buy a couple of Mat Fraser CDs!).