The Unholy Three

One of the best collaborations between Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Three circus performers set up a robbery operation: Echo, the ventriloquist played by Chaney, disguises himself as an old woman and runs a bird shop; Tweedledee, played by Harry Earles, poses as a baby; and Hercules, played by Victor McLaglen, supplies the brute force. Customers come to the shop, their houses get marked, and the burglaries follow. The film's genius is locating horror in disguise rather than monstrosity. The figure in the pram being an adult man establishes the idea that the most dangerous thing in the house is the one that looks most harmless, and Browning would carry that all the way to Freaks. The source is Tod Robbins's novel of the same name. Chaney and Earles played the same parts in the 1930 sound remake, which became Chaney's only talkie and his final film. He died of throat cancer a month after its release. Who it is for: viewers who love silent cinema, Chaney's transformations and crime melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone who will judge the period's treatment of dwarfism and of circus performers by present standards.