The Penalty is Lon Chaney’s breakthrough as a screen villain, as a legless gangster whose body, like his soul, has been twisted by revenge.
The Penalty (1920), directed by Wallace Worsley and based on Gouverneur Morris’s novel, stars Chaney as Blizzard, a San Francisco gang leader whose legs were amputated after a childhood accident caused by a doctor. Blizzard, who moves with his legs strapped behind him, plots revenge on the doctor while building a criminal empire.
Chaney’s Blizzard is terrifying and, unexpectedly, sympathetic. His physical performance, achieved with painful binding and a leather harness, is astonishing, but it is Blizzard’s intelligence and his wounded pride that make him memorable. The film’s climax, in which Blizzard’s revenge turns inward, gives Chaney a tragic dimension.
It is a signature role because it announced Chaney as a star who would transform his body for a character, and because Blizzard remains one of silent cinema’s great villains.