The Penalty (1920)

THE PENALTY  (1920)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Wallace Worsley
    Lon Chaney, Ethel Grey Terry, Charles Clary,
    Claire Adams, Kenneth Harlan, James Mason
Lon Chaney in one of his most physically demanding roles, as Blizzard, the legless king of the San Francisco underworld. Posing for a bust of Satan, Blizzard hatches an insane plan to import a gangster army, loot the city, acquire a new pair of legs and get revenge on the doctor who amputated his old ones. Chaney goes over the top at times - if he had a handlebar moustache, he'd be twirling it - but his ability to affect the appearance of an amputee, without camera tricks and without actually being an amputee, is astonishing. If you didn't know he had legs, you'd never know.