The Shock

Lambert Hillyer's crime melodrama gives Lon Chaney one of his most physically demanding roles — a henchman for a San Francisco blackmail ring who is crippled, walking with a twisted, contorted gait that Chaney achieved through another of his legendary self-torturing contraptions. Sent to a small town to set up a banker for extortion, Chaney's character unexpectedly falls in love with the banker's daughter, and his loyalty to the gang begins to waver. The film's most remarkable sequence is a devastating earthquake — staged with impressive practical effects for 1923 — that serves as both literal catastrophe and metaphor for the moral upheaval in Chaney's character. Not among his most celebrated films, but a fascinating showcase for his physical acting and his ability to find humanity in characters defined by pain and disability.