It is a little hard to believe that the original play on which this film is based had over 100 performance. The story is silly and not very believable nor plausible. Johnny Arthur does well in spite of the lame script and is the lead actor in this comedy. Gertrude Olmstead didn't impress me very much as the love interest. She has a rather homely appearance. Lon Chaney seems also like a secondary character actor in this film. The special effects are poor and in a few cases laughably poor and unconvincing. Not one of Lon Chaney's best. Poor comedy and unbelievable story line.

The best known name in this is, of course, Lon Chaney, who plays Dr. Ziska - a mad scientist who has taken over a sanitarium and is performing experiments on poor unfortunates. The bulk of the movie, though, is carried by an actor named Johnny Arthur. He seems to have had a relatively lengthy (if not especially well known) career, that made the crossover from silents to talkies. This is a silent movie, of course, and Arthur was fine as a wannabe detective who's out to solve the mystery of a wealthy farmer who mysteriously disappeared one night. "The Monster" tried perhaps a bit too hard to be a combination comedy/suspense thriller. Some, I guess, would call it a horror movie, but it never really came across that way to me. In fact, the comedy elements seemed to predominate for the most part. It's irreverent and even at times slapstick in its approach. It uses the pretty standard setting of what seems to be more of a large house than a sanitarium to create a mystery - and, while at times it is mysterious, it never really (to me at least) became frightening, nor did the humour become truly funny. It caused a smile every now and then, I suppose. My biggest criticism would be that it took far too long (really until about the last 10-15 minutes of the movie) for us to get a real sense of what it was that Dr. Ziska was up to, and waiting for that became at times rather tiresome, as likable as all the main characters were.Chaney, who received top billing although his role was secondary (and maybe even less than that) did make Ziska mysterious and in some respects even threatening. The other primary members of the cast were Gertrude Olmstead as Betty, the wannabe detective's love interest, and Hallam Cooley, as his rival for Betty's affection. This was OK. Nothing more than that. I wouldn't consider it a silent classic, although it isn't difficult to watch. (4/10)

Monster, The (1925) ** (out of 4) The teaming of legend Lon Chaney and director Roland West sadly ends up being a very disappointing entry in the "old dark house" genre, which was still quite new at the time this was released. In the film, Chaney plays a mad scientist trying to figure out the secrets of life in an abandoned asylum. Wannabe detective (Johnny Arthur) winds up at the asylum with the woman (Gertrude Olmstead) he loves and the two try to destroy the scientist and his evil ways. THE MONSTER is a major disappointment that doesn't appear to know what type of film it wants to be. Considering Chaney is given top-billing you'd think that the director and studio would want a horror film or at least some sort of dark mystery but they only partially give us that. For some reason the film contains a lot of comedy relief that really sinks everything. The film starts off with the wannabe detective, a store clerk in reality, constantly being pushed around and of course he plans to show them all one day. We get another guy thrown into the mix because he appears to be more "manly" and of course these two both want the same woman. This silly love story never comes full circle and it really just adds minutes to the running time and the film certainly didn't need that. There's full comedy scattered throughout the film and it's a bit of a mystery why they bothered. I mean, you do have the Man of a Thousand Faces and you do have him playing the role of a mad scientist so did they really think people wanted to see this type of comedy? Even stranger is that Chaney gets top-billing yet he doesn't appear until the mid-way point and sadly both Arthur and Olmstead aren't strong enough to carry the material. Once Chaney does get on screen he delivers another fine performance and while there's not any real make-up, I did enjoy that head full of white hair. Chaney was always good at playing mad and he does a good job here but it's a shame he's wasted. West's direction is pretty much all over the place and it's clear that he couldn't do comedy. The "old dark house" stuff is a tad bit better but it's still far from what he did with THE BAT.

Timid JOHNNY ARTHUR carries the first half-hour of THE MONSTER as a detective wanna-be, a sort of silent screen version of the characters Woody Allen often played decades later. Based on a play by Crane Wilbur, the slow moving story takes time to even get to the sanitarium nearby where the mystery angle of the plot will be unraveled.Playing detective, Arthur accidentally stumbles into a house of horrors. Meantime, after a road accident, his girlfriend and his boss stumble into the same mansion seeking help. It is then that Dr. Ziska (LON CHANEY) makes his sinister appearance, informing them that they must stay in the house overnight since he has no telephone. He tells his hulking servant to make them comfortable.Chaney plays his role similar to Bela Lugosi's caped Dracula, so the chill effect is everything it ought to be in a dark house thriller played with mock fright. The comedy aspect of the story would have made a great vehicle for Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard (a la their CAT AND THE CANARY) dark house comedy.It seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum. The mad doctor Ziska has locked Dr. Edwards and his assistants in a dungeon below the mansion and has the patients carrying out his orders. Amateur detective Arthur saves the day by shooting off Roman candles that alert the townspeople to his help signal.It's all done in spirited good fun and confusion, played for laughs more than horror although there is a definite combination of mirth and fright.Summing up: Good dark house comedy with all the usual drawbacks of early silent films but more watchable than most. Not a typical Chaney film by any means. Much lighter than Roland West's THE BAT WHISPERS.