Outside the Law/Shadows

Starring:Priscilla Dean, Wheeler Oakman, Lon Chaney, Ralph Lewis, E. Alyn Warren, Stanley Goethals, Melbourne MacDowell, John George, Wilton Taylor, Marguerite De La Motte, Harrison Ford (II), John St. Polis, Walter Long, Buddy Messinger, Priscilla Bonner, Frances Raymond
Director: Tod Browning, Tom Forman
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Lon Chaney is not the star of Tod Browning's Outside the Law (the second of 10 pictures they made together), but he practically steals the film. Browning cast the man of a thousand faces in two roles, as the despicable gangster Black Mike ("a rat, a vulture, and a snake," according to the titles) and as the devoted Chinese servant to a Confucian Chinatown teacher. Priscilla Dean stars as Molly, the daughter of a San Francisco underworld leader lured back to a life of crime by Mike, who frames her father for murder and then plots to double-cross her as well. Hard-bitten kewpie doll Dean underplays her gangster-moll part beautifully, and Chaney's Mike is dastardly and dangerous, a sneering hard case with a scar running down his cheek. Browning pours on the syrup in the film's middle section as Molly's hard heart is slowly melted by her gangster lover and the cloyingly cute kid from next door. Then he twists it back from melodrama with an escalating series of taut confrontations that build to an exciting, well-staged climactic shootout. The Kino print, taken from the Blackhawk Collection, shows some serious deterioration near the end, but it clears up in time for the fireworks. The orchestral score is edited together from other music and enhanced with sound effects. --Sean Axmaker
Description
The masterful Lon Chaney stars in these two classic silent films. "Outside the Law" (1920, 75 min.) - In this early collaboration with director Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks), Chaney delivers a dual performance of dramatic intensity, starring as Ah Wing, a kind-hearted student of Confucian philosophy, and Black Mike Sylva, a murderous rake of the San Francisco underworld. Like night and day, Ah Wing and Sylva are physical representations of the opposing factions of light and dark that weigh upon the moral conscience of the film's protagonist, Molly Madden (Priscilla Dean), who must choose between lives of crime and domesticity. "Shadows" (1922, 68 min.) - In one of the most challenging performances of his illustrious career, Chaney stars as a Chinese laundryman caught in a web of small-town jealousy and extortion. Both films features new orchestral scores.

Outside the Law/Shadows
Average customer rating:

A very satisfying double feature DVD

One average feature, one very good one

A good value Lon Chaney double feature

Outside the Law/Shadows
Starring: Priscilla Dean , Wheeler Oakman , Lon Chaney , Ralph Lewis , and E. Alyn Warren
Director: Tod Browning , and Tom Forman
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video
Action & Adventure | Silent Films | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Silent Films | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video
Classics | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video
Bonner, Priscilla | ( B ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Chaney, Lon | ( C ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
George, John | ( G ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Lewis, Ralph | ( L ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Long, Walter | ( L ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Oakman, Wheeler | ( O ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Browning, Tod | ( B ) | Directors | Stores | DVD | Video
General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video
DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video
( O ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: 6305871353
Release Date: 2000-06-27

Amazon.com

Lon Chaney is not the star of Tod Browning's Outside the Law (the second of 10 pictures they made together), but he practically steals the film. Browning cast the man of a thousand faces in two roles, as the despicable gangster Black Mike ("a rat, a vulture, and a snake," according to the titles) and as the devoted Chinese servant to a Confucian Chinatown teacher. Priscilla Dean stars as Molly, the daughter of a San Francisco underworld leader lured back to a life of crime by Mike, who frames her father for murder and then plots to double-cross her as well. Hard-bitten kewpie doll Dean underplays her gangster-moll part beautifully, and Chaney's Mike is dastardly and dangerous, a sneering hard case with a scar running down his cheek. Browning pours on the syrup in the film's middle section as Molly's hard heart is slowly melted by her gangster lover and the cloyingly cute kid from next door. Then he twists it back from melodrama with an escalating series of taut confrontations that build to an exciting, well-staged climactic shootout. The Kino print, taken from the Blackhawk Collection, shows some serious deterioration near the end, but it clears up in time for the fireworks. The orchestral score is edited together from other music and enhanced with sound effects. --Sean Axmaker

Description

The masterful Lon Chaney stars in these two classic silent films. "Outside the Law" (1920, 75 min.) - In this early collaboration with director Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks), Chaney delivers a dual performance of dramatic intensity, starring as Ah Wing, a kind-hearted student of Confucian philosophy, and Black Mike Sylva, a murderous rake of the San Francisco underworld. Like night and day, Ah Wing and Sylva are physical representations of the opposing factions of light and dark that weigh upon the moral conscience of the film's protagonist, Molly Madden (Priscilla Dean), who must choose between lives of crime and domesticity. "Shadows" (1922, 68 min.) - In one of the most challenging performances of his illustrious career, Chaney stars as a Chinese laundryman caught in a web of small-town jealousy and extortion. Both films features new orchestral scores.

Customer Reviews:

A very satisfying double feature DVD.......2007-03-07

Although both these silent films feature the legendary Lon Chaney, they both stand up on their own as interesting stories with an ethical point or message to make, and both are nicely presented on this DVD with good musical accompaniment. Lon Chaney fans might be a bit disappointed by "Outside the Law" because he only plays a supporting role, albeit a dual one - as a rough gangster and as a mild-mannered Chinese man - while Priscilla Dean actually has the starring role. There is also some deterioration at the end of the film, but otherwise both films have nice, clear picture quality. "Shadows" stands out as one of Chaney's typical best characterizations as he convincingly plays the part of Yen Sin, an elderly Chinese man washed up in a small fishing village after a storm. Being "the man of a thousand faces", Chaney is surely one of the screen's most fascinating characters of all time, being able to not only use make-up (which he applied himself) to create dozens of different faces, but he also played double amputees in films like "The Penalty" and "The Unknown". He had great physical strength and agility, which is evident especially in "The Unknown", but here in "Shadows" he convinces the audience with mostly body language that he is a feeble, hunchbacked hard-working laundry "Chink", as they were called in those days. In fact, when the film was released in 1922-23, producers wondered how audiences would take to a Chinaman playing a good, even the pivotal heroic role, because unfortunately up to that time the Chinese had usually been cast in a bad light, playing villains! Some of this racial prejudice and typecasting is still evident in the intertitles which give Chaney's character an exaggerated Chinese accent. But this aside, Chaney himself plays the part with great compassion, conviction and humanity, and the story of "Shadows" also has lessons in compassion and humanity, as well as teaching a lesson on religious hypocrisy. Quite a surprising combination, when you think about it!

Last but definitely not least, "Outside the Law" also has a few unusual and surprising elements. It also features Chinese characters in a good light, giving out some Confucian words of wisdom to Molly (Priscilla Dean) and her father, who had been drawn into the crime world but find their way out of it in the end. Chaney plays two smaller and totally opposing parts: a good Chinese follower of Confucius and the outright mean and tough underworld gangster "Black Mike", who schemes a trap for Molly and her father. But he overlooks the element of love, which comes to Molly not only in a fellow petty thief who tells her of Black Mike's plot, but also in the form of a cute little boy who slowly melts her heart. The story's message is about reform and `going straight', done in a nice, effective manner, balancing some melodrama with hard action scenes. Priscilla Dean comes across well in her role in this film written and directed by Tod Browning, and an unusual orchestral score with sound effects suits this type of crime drama well, too. For Chaney fans or anyone who appreciates silent films of the early 1920s with interesting stories, this DVD shouldn't disappoint.

One average feature, one very good one.......2007-01-16

'Outside the Law' (1920), which was directed by Lon Chaney's favorite director, Tod Browning, is rather typical of the features Lon made pre-1923, when he became a big star in his own right. Though he had achieved fame in 1919, it was as a character actor, not really so much a starring actor just yet. Here he plays a dual role as secondary characters Ah Wing, a good guy, and Black Mike Sylva, a really nasty crime lord of the San Francisco underworld. The true main characters of this film are Priscilla Dean (at the time Universal's top female star) and Wheeler Oakman as Molly Madden and her boyfriend Bill Ballard. Black Mike frames Molly's father for murder, and while he's in jail, Molly is tipped off by Bill that Mike is planning to double-cross her in another crime he's plotting. She and Bill in turn double-cross Mike, and hide out in an apartment with the jewels they stole, constantly afraid the police (or, worse yet, Mike and his cronies) are going to discover their whereabouts. Meanwhile Chang Lo, a wise Confucian friend of Mr. Madden's, warns the police that even though he's innocent, he's going to emerge from jail with murder in his heart because of the injustice that was done to him (in line with how the film opens with a quote from Confucius, "If a country had none but good rulers for a hundred years, crime might be stamped out and the death penalty abolished"). He also predicts that Molly and Bill will voluntarily turn themselves in and hand over the jewels to the police, so there will be no need to hunt them down like animals and arrest them. Most of the film centers on Bill and Molly's increasingly cramped existence in hiding and their attempts to go straight, influenced by a little boy who lives across the way. Things don't really start getting exciting and fast-paced till Lon's evil character shows up again, culminating in a lot of great fight scenes. Unfortunately, these last two reels or so show a lot of deterioration in some of the frames, but not so much so that we ever miss anything really exciting.

'Shadows' (1922) is the superior of the two films. Lon plays Yen Sin, a Chinese laundryman who is one of a handful of survivors of a shipwreck that lands in the small fishing village of Urkey. Although the Chinese characters in the average film of this era were routinely portrayed even more offensively than African-American characters, Yen Sin is a very sympathetic character, a good guy, with none of the usual Sinophobia typical of this period. Though most of the locals don't want anything to do with him because he's not only foreign but not a Christian, he does find love and friendship with one of the local boys, and with Sympathy Gibbs and the young new minister John Malden (the original Harrison Ford), who quickly get married. They don't treat him like he's a "heathen" who should be avoided and feared, but as a human being who deserves respect and humane treatment as much as any other person in the town. (Although why did his character have to walk around hunched over like that, the way Richard Barthelmess also does in 'Broken Blossoms'? Was this some sort of convention used by white actors playing Chinese characters in this era?) Trouble in paradise emerges when Rev. Malden is away on business and receives a letter purporting to be from Daniel Griggs (the excellent character actor Walter Long), Sympathy's first husband (whom she despised), whom everyone had believed to have perished in the shipwreck. With the help of his fellow-reverend Nate Snow, Rev. Malden starts paying off Griggs, all while unaware that Snow is the one really blackmailing him because he's always had feelings for Sympathy. Ultimately, it is Yen Sin who teaches all of the townspeople a very valuable lesson about the true nature of faith, tolerance, and forgiveness. While ordinarily I find the premise that everyone needs to be converted to Christianity and that people are better off that way morally offensive and severely outdated, that theme is handled a bit more sensitively here than it usually is. It's certainly a more enlightened and progressive approach to the subject than in, say, a story from the Middle Ages. At least here Rev. Malden is trying to convert Yen Sin through love and setting a good example, not through telling him he's doomed and that his own religion is wicked, diabolical, and wrong.

Overall, this is ultimately a pretty good disc, in spite of the uneven first feature on it. Even in Lon's earlier films, he always had a commanding presence and played all of these characters so well, be they good or evil characters. While it might not be something I'd highly recommend to someone just getting into silents or Lon's films in general, it is a real treat for people who are more than just casual fans.

A good value Lon Chaney double feature.......2001-02-27

I have now seen 10 of Lon Chaney's films and I would say that they are nearly all enjoyable. The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are masterpieces, the rest vary in quality, but Chaney's varied performances always make them interesting. The two films on this DVD are relatively minor works. Strangely, the one by the more famous director Tod Browning, Outside the Law, is the lesser of the two. This is, in part, because it is not really a Chaney feature at all. He plays two roles, one a sympathetic Asian character, the other an evil criminal out to destroy the leading characters. This is the problem, for Chaney's supporting characters disappear for long stretches of the film. The main story is thus a rather dull affair about two somewhat colourless lovers trying to go straight and return the jewels they have stolen. The film only really comes alive with Chaney. The biggest difficulty with this film however, is the print quality. It is a black and white print which, for the most part is fine, but towards the end there is some serious damage, so much so that at times the picture all but disappears. There are furthermore some frames missing so that sometimes the story jumps rather abruptly. The second film on this DVD, Shadows, is much better. The story is interesting and keeps the viewer guessing, so it is best not to read any synopses before hand. Chaney has a major role as a Chinese laundry man and shows how he could contort his body and face into a role. Some people might have a problem with the titles attempting to imitate his speech patterns. But it must be remembered that it was typical of silent films to try to portray visually the differences in the way people speak. The same happens, in other films, with French or Cockney characters and was not considered to be derogatory. The print of this film is fine. It is a sepia tinted and for the most part free from damage. Again there are a few frames missing, but these do not affect the story continuity. I would recommend this DVD for Shadows alone, the fact that it includes Outside the Law as well makes it good value indeed.

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