INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN (1956)

Director: Jack Pollexfen

Writers: Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, Jack Pollexfen

Producer: Jack Pollexfen

 

Cast: Lon Chaney, Jr., Casey Adams (aka Max Showalter), Marian Carr (credited as Marion Carr), Ross Elliott, Stuart Randall, Robert Shayne, Roy Engel, Kenneth Terrell, Marvin Ellis, Robert Foulk, Marjorie Stapp, Joe Flynn, Ann Doran, Rita Green, Madge Cleveland, Peggy Maley

Charles 'Butcher' Benton (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is sent to the electric chair for a murder he committed during an armored car robbery. Before he is executed, he vows an unlikely revenge on his three accomplices that betrayed him and refuses to divulge where he hid the stolen money. After Benton’s execution, scientist Dr. Bradshaw (Robert Shayne) acquires Benton’s corpse for his experiments. His electrical treatments restore life to Benton and render him mute, but also endow him with impenetrable skin and superhuman strength. Benton realizes that he can make good on his threats of revenge and goes on a killing spree.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

A low-budget flick buoyed almost entirely by the Chaney name heading the cast, Indestructible Man is a peculiar blend of genres. Its best aspect is the film noir elements (shady lawyer collaborating with crooks, burlesque dancers, detectives, and a death house vow of revenge) that distinguish it from other '50s sci-fi horror films. Just about any character we spend time with in this movie is seedy, except the police detective hero on the case that comes across like a smug boy scout until the conclusion. Then he turns into a presumptuous asshole!

Director Jack Pollexfen did the uncredited first draft of the screenplay for Indestructible Man. Prior to this film, he had produced other sci-fi horrors such as The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Neanderthal Man (1953). He would go on to produce more in the genre.

Indestructible Man is told Dragnet-style from the perspective of Police Lieutenant Dick Chasen (Casey Adams) narrating “The 'Butcher' Benton Case.” If not for this cops-and-robbers angle, it would play out very much like the early Chaney flick Man-Made Monster (1940). There Chaney was also made into a mute, death-dealing being due to electrical experiments by an amoral scientist. Indestructible Man is not as polished as that earlier Universal Pictures film, but it is more interesting because of its police procedural and disreputable character elements. As derivative as this film’s menace may seem, Indestructible Man itself was swiped for 1961’s Most Dangerous Man Alive. The latter film substituted an atomic radiation accident for electrical experimentation, but still has a film noir storyline.

Indestructible Man is at its best in Chaney’s first appearance. It is a simple and bleak scene with Chaney’s 'Butcher' Benton behind bars conversing with the sleazy lawyer Paul Lowe (Ross Elliot) that helped him plan the heist that has him awaiting execution. Benton is convinced Lowe arranged for his conviction, and he swears an unlikely revenge against Lowe and the two others with whom he committed the robbery. This quickly sets the agenda for our monster-to-be, and Chaney underplays it well using his gravelly voice and tired brute’s face to make it all seem inevitable. It is Chaney’s only dialogue scene, since he next appears as a corpse revived by the mad science that burns out his vocal chords.

For the rest of the picture, Chaney’s emoting consists of acts of violence and his twitching, crazy eyes shown in an endless series of close-ups. Okay, it’s not quite endless; it’s only six twitchy-eyed close-ups. But I just had to know, and now so do you. You are bound to be a big hit at your next cocktail party with trivia as fascinating as that up your sleeve and a stiff martini or two under your belt. You owe me one.

Lieutenant Dick Chasen, as played by Casey Adams, is an odd choice for hero. He has an oily announcer’s voice and an earnest everyman attitude that seems ill-suited for the film noir environment his character travels in. Although not possessed of rugged leading man looks, he could be a believable enough workaday hero, but he comes across as smug and naïvely idealistic. Dick Chasen takes some getting used to, but just wait for his last scene! “Smug” does not begin to do him justice. The shit that is smeared on his nose during his sewer chase of Benton seems fitting.

Marian Carr plays Eva Martin, the beautiful, blonde burlesque dancer that manages to be as wholesome as June Cleaver. She had a small and memorable bit as the sexiest woman in the film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Her character used to be a casual acquaintance of Benton, and she becomes of interest to detective Dick Chasen for all the right reasons. That is, until Dick really lives up to his name in the last scene of Indestructible Man. That finale is far more disturbing than all the onscreen carnage committed against women in 1978’s The Toolbox Murders!