Cinema Revisited: Indestructible Man (1956)
Directed by Jack Pollexfen. Cast: Lon Chaney Jr, Marian Carr, Casey Adams, Ross Elliott, Stuart Randall, Ken Terrell, Marjorie Stapp, Robert Shayne, Peggy Maley, Robert Foulk, Rita Green, Roy Engel, Madge Cleveland, Joe Flynn, Dorothy Ford, Eddie Marr. Released March 25, 1956. Running time: 72 minutes.
By this point in his career, Lon Chaney jr.'s drinking had relegated him to smaller supporting roles, his only chance at getting above-title billing being in low budget horror sagas. Having appeared in the classic Universal monster movies as The Wolf Man, his name still meant something to horror movie fans. Chaney kept working (he appeared in seven movies and TV shows this year alone), but his roles were often veritable cameos. "Indestructible Man" was the perfect B-level horror movie for Chaney. After the opening scenes, he has no dialog at all.
Lon plays a large, intense inmate on death row. He is sent to the electric chair, but after being executed, he is used in a scientific experiment that jolts him back to life. He cannot communicate verbally, but his mind realizes who he is and his situation. Now indestructible, where bullets don't even stop him, Chaney goes after everyone who double-crossed him in life.
Chaney's acting in the early scenes, when his character has dialog and focus, reminds us that even at this point in his career, his skills were intact. The dialog in the scene is essentially to setup the backstory of how his character was used, framed, and considered expendable, thus his impending execution. Chaney is stern, focused, and delivers his lines with conviction. It is the opening scene and it immediately draws the viewer into the story.
An alternate plot features Casey Adams (who later would be billed as Max Showalter), as a detective trying to find the stolen loot by the gang to which Chaney was connected. This leads him through an array of nightclubs and burlesque houses where he tangles with showgirls and gangsters to attain more info.
The film could play as a crime drama, (Adams' narration gives the movie a noir feel), but even these earlier expositional scenes are played like a horror mystery. The experiment that brings Lon back to life is introduced within ten minutes (a scientist is experimenting on bodies in hopes of finding a cancer cure). Thus, early in the movie, Chaney becomes the title force and spends the film finding and attacking his enemies in life. The narrator guides us: "The tremendous electrical voltage had increased his cellular structure to the point where he was no longer a man - he was a vicious, brutal animal"
This concept had been done in a tense Warner Brothers movie, "The Walking Dead" (1936) featuring Boris Karloff and directed by the quite formidable Michael Curitz ("Casablanca," "Angels With Dirty Faces"). But while that film had greater dramatic substance and a religious theme, "Indestructible Man" strips down the concept to its base horror elements and, on its own merit, is remarkably good.
Producer-director Jack Pollexfen managed to put together a solid little quickie B-level horror movie that breezes by, never taxes the viewer, and has elements of suspense, melodrama, and some genuinely scary moments. And Lon Chaney's performance, along with the aforementioned opening scene with dialog, is focused and committed. Pollexfen offers a closeup of the wild-eyed title character as he strangles his way out of the laboratory and sulks out of the building. Chaney was good at expressing wild-eyed terror and Pollexfen takes advantage of this with occasional closeups that add to the horror element of his narrative. The only drawback is the footage with Adams, as it disjoints the rhythm and distracts from the narrative focal point.
Despite its low budget, "Indestructible Man" secured good theater bookings at the time of its initial release, being paired as the second feature in double-bills with top level sci-fi features like "World Without End" and "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." And now, as it has slipped into the public domain and is easily accessible, "The Indestructible Man" is a fun quickie that would fit nicely in any horror movie marathon.