Phroso the magician takes 18 years to reveal his infinite jest only to get burned by the final punchline! Another Tod Browning insanely ambitious plot may stretch credibility but not awe-inducing enjoyment, as Lon Chaney as the cuckolded magician leers and crawls towards certain doom, his only goal comeuppance for the man who “stole” his wife, even at the cost of an innocent life. Yet Chaney is also able to imbue Phroso (or Dead-Legs, as he is also called) with the seemingly human flaw of compassion beneath the veneer of cruelty. Since Chaney’s face isn’t hidden beneath a mask or makeup, he contorts his visage into deep emotions, from abject debasement to teary regret: it’s a remarkable performance! His only “schtick” the physicality of crawling about the floor, slithering like the Grinch, like the cold-blooded reptile he has made himself become. Browning’s sideshow trick is disclosing the magician’s secret of the disappearing cabinet, the one act that Phroso and his wife performed prior to the affair and one that he utilizes to quell the restless cannibals of the African continent. The portrayal of the indigenous Africans is typically racist of early cinema, represented as chanting natives, easily fooled by the white men who substitute kerosene for bourbon and whose slight-of-hand seems god-like. In one scene, Crane is summoned to Dead-Leg’s villa and when the path become swampy, the black men pick him up, so his shoes don’t get muddy. White entitlement in darkest Africa.
The plot is insane: Phroso (Lon Chaney) and his wife/assistant Anna perform a disappearing act vaudeville routine. When Anna falls in love with Crane (Lionel Barrymore) and he tells Phroso they’re leaving together for Africa, a confrontation ensues where Phroso is pushed over a balcony and breaks his back, causing him to be paralyzed from the waist down. A year later, Phroso learns of Anna’s return and finds her dead in a church with her infant daughter now orphaned. It’s never explained how or why she dies: was it suicide? Disease? Murder? So Phroso takes the baby, and the story jumps eighteen years later, he’s now known as Dead-Legs in a squalid jungle villa and Maize (Mary Nolan), the adopted baby now an adult, is forced to prostitute herself in a grungy Zanzi-bar, so to speak. Ha! Thinking that Maize is Crane’s daughter, his almost two decades of revenge is a dish about to be served cold. Or so he thinks!
Though the camera rarely moves, and Browning chooses to film in static compositions, the movement within the frame, from the physical violence and dancing to the facial contortions of Chaney, creates drama and suspense. When Chaney crawls across the floor towards the camera like a slithering beast, in focus the entire shot, it’s quite unsettling. Browning’s use of close-up is also wonderful as Mary Nolan’s transformation from blonde-haired ingenue to dirty whorish drunk is quite startling too. She and Chaney express much with their eyes and slight turn of the mouth, without having to exaggerate or stage-act. The peripheral characters aren’t fleshed-out enough and remain caricatures (as do the native people) yet the whiskey-infused Doc fits the algorithm for love interest and savior. The narrative twist probably doesn’t surprise many but Chaney sells it, his body language alone expressing his absolute defeat...at his own hands. That he saves Maize and Doc as his final act of contrition may save his soul, but his body still burns in hell!
