The Penalty (Silent)

Years ago, an innocent child, the victim of an automobile accident, had his legs taken away from him by a careless surgeon. As an adult, he is known only as "Blizzard", the ruthless leader of the criminal underworld. Though the police can't touch him, he is still obsessed with Dr. Ferris, the man who mutilated him as a child. He forces Ferris to graft the legs of another man onto his body - but instead, the doctor removes the part of Blizzard's brain that gives him the capacity for evil. Now seemingly happy and reformed, Blizzard even takes a wife…but it may be too late for him, as his former life as a criminal will have final, and horrible, consequences…

More than any other film, The Penalty cemented Lon Chaney's reputation as "The Man of a Thousand Faces". To play the amputee Blizzard, Chaney had to wear a complicated apparatus involving two wooden buckets and multiple leather straps. His knees were placed in the buckets, while his lower legs were strapped behind his back - painfully. Despite this - and the warnings of doctors - Chaney gave a bravura performance, making him a horror movie icon and leading to his immortal roles in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Chaney would make four more films with director Wallace Worsley - The Ace of Hearts (1921), Voices of the City (1921), A Blind Bargain (1922) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923).