Review – He Who Gets Slapped

Though not strictly speaking a horror movie, this Lon Chaney silent feature is in many ways spookier than a lot of his genre stuff. He plays a scientist driven mad by the betrayal of his wealthy sponsor who takes credit for his work and – insult to injury – runs off with his wife. Abandoning the world of research, our hero becomes a circus clown specializing in a masochistic act in which all the other clowns in the circus – and this thing has a battalion of them – slap him repeatedly. When his betrayer shows up in the audience things really start to turn creepy. The production puts some then-state-of-the-art effects to good use, but the acting really carries the day. This is the first movie ever shot by MGM, though not the first released by the studio. Mildly amusing