There’s something quite lovely that all the great Universal horror stars all made cult classics towards the end of their careers – Karloff had Targets and The Sorcerers (if you go back a few more years you could add The Terror and The Raven to the list), Lugosi had the Ed Wood movies, and Lon Chaney Jnr had this. It's an enjoyable wacked-out low-budget film with fresh handling and a neat idea: old Lon plays the chauffeur who looks after a family who suffer from a degenerative condition. That’s the angle – the plot is a solid, old-fashioned will dispute.
The acting is very strong across the board; Chaney is effective in a role that suits his gentle, sad eyes (as an added bonus for Chaney fans there’s a reference to the mummy and the wolf man). There’s a very good performance from Sid Haig as the most visually interesting of the children. The downside is that once these weird and wonderful characters are set up the film doesn’t seem to have any really good ideas to top it. Still, the ones that it has are easily enough to keep things engaging and interesting.
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