Lon Chaney Jr.

A 1951 jungle horror film written and directed by Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter of The Wolf Man. On a rubber plantation deep in the Amazon, foreman Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his employer and takes his beautiful wife Dina (Barbara Payton) — but a witch's curse condemns him to transform into a gorilla, stalking the jungle while the police commissioner (Lon Chaney Jr.) closes in. Essentially a loupe-garou tale transplanted to the tropics, it is a minor-key cult item with a remarkable cast for its budget. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

A 1956 American Western co-directed by Albert C. Gannaway and Ismael Rodríguez, shot in Mexico and released through Republic Pictures. Bruce Bennett stars as Daniel Boone, leading a wagon train of settlers into Kentucky while fending off Shawnee warriors stirred up by the French renegade Simon Girty. Lon Chaney Jr. plays the Shawnee chief Blackfish, and country singer Faron Young appears as a settler — one of several Gannaway productions to cast Nashville stars. The film is in the public domain after its copyright went unrenewed, and it has been a fixture of budget western compilations ever since.

Western · Adventure

A convicted killer known as "the Butcher" is executed in the gas chamber, but his body is sold to a scientist who accidentally revives him with an experimental serum, making him nearly indestructible and impervious to bullets. He sets out to take revenge on the partners who betrayed him. Lon Chaney Jr., in the late, diminished stretch of his career, plays the mute, brooding creature with almost no dialogue, stalking through Los Angeles landmarks like Angels Flight and the Bradbury Building. The film is a low-budget crime-horror hybrid that plays like a rough remake of Chaney's earlier Man Made Monster. It entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Horror · Sci-Fi