The Reese Project Silent Film Series 

THE SHOCK (1923)

Drama

Running time:

In a variation on the phony cripple performed numerous times in his career, Chaney stars in The Shock as Wilse Dilling -- "dope-peddler, safe-cracker, gun-man" -- a legitimately handicapped hoodlum of old San Francisco who drags himself from the darkness of Chinatown into the redemptive sunlight of the country, where he finds the inspiration to turn away from his life of crime.  But when the father of the woman he loves is blackmailed, Dilling must venture back into the "whirlpool of vice and intrigue" of his criminal past, where the thriller reaches its spectacular, earth-shaking climax.