Not many would dispute that Hollywood horror movies had their heyday at Universal in the 1930s, the location and period that produced, among others, Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933). But Universal’s prowess in the genre had already been well established before the sound era immortalized Bela Lugosi’s accent and Boris Karloff’s grunts. The studio had made The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), the two films for which the incredible Lon Chaney is most revered. Universal produced another horror milestone in the silent era, after Chaney had moved over to MGM. The Man Who Laughs is not nearly as well known as the two Chaney classics, nor was it famously remade, but it’s the most terrifying of the three, all of which found horror in the human rather than the supernatural. Since it was made during Hollywood’s transition to sound, The Man Who Laughs is one of those silents with a soundtrack of music and aural effects but no spoken dialogue. Because it marked silent film’s last hurrah, some would argue that 1928—move over, 1939—was Hollywood’s greatest year. That year’s roster, boasting The Crowd, Street Angel, The Wind, A Woman of Affairs, The Circus, Show People, and The Last Command, proved that visual storytelling had reached an apex of sophistication and mobility. A year later, cameras would be playing second-fiddle to microphones, resulting in a blessedly short-lived era of hopelessly stagnant movies. The Man Who Laughs is one of 1928’s best films, a macabre marvel whose biggest claim to fame is that it was Batman creator Bob Kane’s acknowledged inspiration for the look of the Joker, Batman’s flamboyant nemesis.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.