This is a bizarre little horror/comedy, mostly a comedy, the horror aspects almost parody. Lon Chaney has the top billing, but he's the evil adversary to a group of three, the leader being an amateur detective far too reminiscent of the previous year's Sherlock Jr. by the great Buster Keaton. He carries around a book called How to Be a Detective, and there are frequent zoom-ins which underline certain passages in the book. This is the ancestor to the type of film where a group of normal people are abducted into a strange house with a strange owner.
As for the film's quality, its humor is generally on target, but it is never all that funny. A lot of giggles, but I never laughed out loud. It is often very slow moving, but it has a few wonderful set pieces and suspense scenes. Lon Chaney's villain is pretty entertaining; I really wish they would have had more of him. There's much more footage of his evil henchman. The climactic scene is excellent.