A Blind Bargain

One of Chaney's lost films is 1922's A Blind Bargain in which he plays two roles. One, that of Dr. Lamb, a twisted New York physician, and the other as the doctor's bestial servant (pictured above). In the film, Lamb makes a pact with a desperate young writer who has an ailing mother. The doctor agrees to cure the elderly woman and get her son's work published on one condition. After the operation and book's publication, the young man must submit himself to Lamb's bizarre genetic experiments. This plot line has been used countless times throughout fiction in the twentieth century, but this was the first filmed example of it.
Missing films become "lost" usually due to carelessness or accident. In the case of A Blind Bargain, the only known print was destroyed in a studio fire in the late Sixties. That blaze also destroyed the most sought-after (and notoriously missing) movie in Hollywood history: 1927's London After Midnight. Also starring Chaney, it is considered the first American Vampire movie.