The Black Bird [DVD] [1926]

This characteristically grim Lon Chaney/Tod Browning collaboration stars "The Man of a Thousand Faces" in two distinct characterizations. By day, the crippled Bishop of Limehouse (Chaney) is a kindly, beneficent figure, ministering to the needs of the poor and destitute. But by night, the Bishop sheds his clerical garb-and his physical handicap-to become the Black Bird, mastermind of a vast underworld organization. Completely undetectable and untouchable, the Black Bird can only be destroyed by himself-a fact that consumes the film's final reels. Renee Adoree and Owen Moore also star in this atmospheric melodrama, which was adapted by Waldemar Young from Tod Browning's story The Mockingbird.~Hal Erickson