Another B movie, another mad scientist tampering in God's domain. This one gets hold of the recently executed body of a vicious killer named Butcher Benton (Lon Chaney Jr) and brings him back from the dead. The resurrection process also makes Benton indestructible - but I guess you have to expect that kind of thing when you're tampering in God's domain.
Benton has a score to settle with the thugs who helped put him on Death Row, so he sets off to get revenge and to collect a cache of stolen loot hidden in the LA sewers. Meanwhile a detective is closing in, helped by Benton's former girlfriend.
Aside from some dull romantic interludes between the cop and the girlfriend, the film moves along at a decent pace, helped by some good location work around LA and an effective, even sympathetic, performance from Chaney. As in his best known role as The Wolf Man, you get a real sense of the pain that his transformation has caused him.
Oddly, the film could probably have worked as well or even better without the sci-fi elements. If Benton had simply escaped from prison - without being resurrected, without being made indestructible - the core plot of a desperate man hunting down the rats who double-crossed him would still be there, and would locate the movie firmly in film noir country.
Benton has a score to settle with the thugs who helped put him on Death Row, so he sets off to get revenge and to collect a cache of stolen loot hidden in the LA sewers. Meanwhile a detective is closing in, helped by Benton's former girlfriend.
Aside from some dull romantic interludes between the cop and the girlfriend, the film moves along at a decent pace, helped by some good location work around LA and an effective, even sympathetic, performance from Chaney. As in his best known role as The Wolf Man, you get a real sense of the pain that his transformation has caused him.
Oddly, the film could probably have worked as well or even better without the sci-fi elements. If Benton had simply escaped from prison - without being resurrected, without being made indestructible - the core plot of a desperate man hunting down the rats who double-crossed him would still be there, and would locate the movie firmly in film noir country.