It is a wow of a story in the first place. (…) And there’s another thing about this picture and that is that Lon Chaney stands out like a million dollars. He’s done that before, but always with a more or less grotesque make-up. No make-up this time. He isn’t all hunched up, he isn’t legless, he isn’t this, that or the other thing in deformities. He’s just Lon Chaney and he’s great. He must have had a hard time convincing ’em that as just plain Lon Chaney he could be as great as though he was this, that or the other form of a cripple, but from now on it’s going to be another story. The turning loose of Echo by the courts is about the only inconsistent fact in the whole darn yarn, for he certainly was an accessory before the fact in the murder if there ever was one, and the courts don’t turn loose boys out, especially after the two murderers are dead and out of the way without the courts having had a chance at them. But boys, it’s a picture – and what a picture!

Fred., Variety, August 5, 1925