D: Ray Kirkwood / 60m

Cast: Lon Chaney Jr, Dean Benton, Marie Burton, Jack Mulhall, Eddie Gribbon, Larry McGrath, Allen Greer, Theodore Lorch

After four years of being billed as Creighton Chaney in an effort to make his own way in movies, Lon Chaney Jr finally landed his first lead role in this below average potboiler.  As nightclub owner cum gangster John Arthur “Silk” Lennox, Chaney does his best to appear urbane and charming, and there are moments when he almost pulls it off, but mostly he looks uncomfortable; when he’s being an out and out villain, Chaney appears more relaxed.  It was inevitable perhaps that Chaney’s career – outside of Of Mice and Men (1939) and The Wolf Man (1941) – would be given over to playing villains.  He wasn’t blessed with matinee idol looks, and often his delivery was a little off, but he was a formidable screen presence, and it’s interesting to see him here finding his feet.

Lennox and his gang rob banks.  He tricks the police into giving him a cast-iron alibi for his latest robbery, and when they fail to make any headway, it’s down to the FBI to lend a hand.  Fortuitously, one of Lennox’s gang, the Deacon (Budd Buster), tries to leave town with the money from the robbery.  Lennox tracks him down and has him killed; this provides the FBI with the opportunity they need to bring Lennox to justice.

The short running time reflects the slightness of the plot, and the by-the-numbers filmmaking.  The script, adapted by Norman Springer from his story The Riot Squad, is too weak to make much of an impact, and Kirkwood directs without attempting to make any of it appear interesting.  There’s a sub-plot involving an act at the nightclub – played by Benton and Burton – that plays as unconvincingly as Lennox’s trademark saying “It’s all going as smooth as silk”.  The sets are functional and look entirely too flimsy, and the photography, by the usually reliable Robert F. Cline, is flat and uninspired, leaving the movie a chore to look at.  There’s a chirpy performance from Mulhall that raises the stakes when he’s onscreen but this isn’t until the last twenty minutes or so; before then, everyone else fails to ignite the soggy material.

From here, Chaney would go on to a succession of uncredited roles in movies such as Slave Ship (1937) and Love and Hisses (also 1937).  He had other, credited, roles but it wasn’t until Of Mice and Men that he finally broke out as a leading man, even if it was largely in low budget horror movies.  Chaney was capable of giving strong performances when needed, but all too often his personal demons got in the way of his career.  Seeing Chaney in The Shadow of Silk Lennox is like watching a fighter early on in his career who’ll maybe only get that one chance at a title shot.  It’s reassuring to know that, even with his eventual decline as an actor – Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964) anyone? – Chaney had his time in the sun.  He was sometimes an unpredictable actor, and that often makes watching some of his movies more rewarding than they should be (although that can’t be said here).

Rating: 3/10 – low budget doesn’t have to mean low quality but it does here; ponderous and underwhelming, The Shadow of Silk Lennox fails to rise above its mediocre origins.