THE SHOCK
starring Lon Chaney
HARRISON'S REPORTS
June 2, 1923
Another excellent melodrama with Mr. Chaney in the leading role,
except that his part this time is more human, more sympathetic
than any of those which he took in other pictures. He is a cripple,
and his ability to act as a cripple would act in real life is
a piece of art. The other characters, too, act their parts well.
The San Francisco earthquake is reproduced with realism. The
love affair between the hero and the heroine is portrayed so well
that the spectator's sympathy is with them all the time.
It is an underworld melodrama, unfolding in San Francisco and elsewhere in California, in which the hero is depicted as being a member of a gang of crooks, led by a woman. The hero is sent to a small town to shadow an enemy of his leader. Later he falls in love with the shadowed man's daughter, and when he learns that the shadowed man is in difficult circumstances, created by the persecution of the gang leader, he comes to his rescue. The gang leader is incensed at the hero's perfidy; she orders the heroine abducted, and the hero kept a prisoner, intending to make them both suffer. But the San Francisco earthquake becomes the instrument by which their lives are spared. The hero's deformity is corrected by an effective operation, after which he marries the heroine.
THE SHOCK
Starring Lon Chaney and Virginia Valli
PHOTOPLAY
August, 1923
Lon Chaney gives another of this hideously distorted and uncannily clever characterizations. As a cripple of the underworld, who gets salvation through his love for an innocent young country girl. The miracle idea - which has never been allowed to rest since Chaney's first success - is brought in, linked up to the great San Francisco earthquake. Blackmail, crime and all sorts, and unshakeable faith.
For more information, see "The Shock" as our "Feature of the Month."