Classic Films in Focus: THE UNHOLY THREE (1925)

The Unholy Three (1925) takes director Tod Browning and star Lon Chaney out of the horror genre, but this silent crime drama is still weird enough to satisfy fans of their other films. Many of Browning's favorite motifs are on display, including his obsession with carnival sideshow types, and Chaney, so often deformed to play strange characters, this time adopts the guise of a little old lady with stooped shoulders and a sweet, grandmotherly face. Mae Busch, Harry Earles, and a young Victor McLaglen add to the film's appeal with their performances, with Earles in particular getting the opportunity to prove that his small stature was not the only thing he had to bring to his roles.

Chaney plays sideshow ventriloquist Echo, who hatches a bizarre scheme to commit robberies by posing as the elderly female owner of a bird store. He recruits fellow performers Hercules (Victor McLaglen) and Tweedledee (Harry Earles) as his accomplices, and he also brings along his pick-pocket sweetheart, Rosie (Mae Busch). Echo's plans go awry when Hercules and Tweedledee commit a Christmas Eve robbery without him, and Rosie turns out to be in love with the innocent man they intend to frame for the crime.

Chaney's character resembles many of his other roles in that Echo is not an entirely bad man, but one capable of great good or great evil as a result of his ambitious, jealous nature. Echo loves Rosie more than he is able to express to her; he doesn't even realize how much he cares about her until she falls for the unassuming Hector (Matt Moore). When Rosie pleads with Echo to save Hector from being executed for the trio's crimes, Echo has to choose between selfless love and his own safety. As Echo, Chaney is intense, a man taut with energy and expectation. As Mrs. O'Grady, he hides that masculine identity beneath an old woman's face and clothes, but the best scenes show Echo struggling to repress his real feelings while maintaining his feminine disguise. The ridiculous nature of Echo's impersonation grabs our attention in several scenes, but Browning and Chaney frequently remind us that this is no mere frolic, and the consequences of the trio's robberies are deadly.

Of the supporting players, Victor McLaglen and Matt Moore have the least to do, although seeing McLaglen's impressive physique is quite a thrill. Moore’s milquetoast Hector is the weakest part of the film, even more so than the chimpanzee standing in for a ferocious gorilla. He’s so dull that it’s hard to understand what Rosie sees in him, although Mae Busch gives a very good performance as the bad girl slowly succumbing to her better nature. Harry Earles steals his scenes repeatedly as Tweedledee, who spends much of his time pretending to be a toddler but really has the most violent, selfish nature of the lot. When we first meet him, he kicks a child in the face and then tries to get into a brawl; later he watches the other characters with sharp, calculating eyes, always waiting for an opportunity to get the upper hand. The role provides a fascinating contrast with Earles’ best known part, that of the innocent Hans in Browning’s horror masterpiece, Freaks (1932).

Lon Chaney and Harry Earles reprised their roles for a sound version of The Unholy Three in 1930, with Jack Conway as the director. Tod Browning is best remembered today for Dracula (1931), but his other films with Chaney include The Unknown (1927), West of Zanzibar (1928), and Where East is East (1929). See more of Mae Busch in Foolish Wives (1922), Souls for Sale (1923), and Sons of the Desert (1933). Victor McLaglen won an Oscar for Best Actor for The Informer (1935); a favorite of director John Ford, he makes memorable appearances in Wee Willie Winkie (1937), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952). Browning liked the drag aspect of The Unholy Three enough to revisit it with The Devil-Doll (1936), in which Lionel Barrymore tackles the role of the counterfeit granny.

Classic Films in Focus: FREAKS (1932)

Tod Browning made a lasting mark on the horror genre with Dracula (1931), but Freaks (1932) is by far the stranger and more inventive of the two films. The director had explored the circus before with Lon Chaney silents like The Unholy Three (1925) and The Unknown (1927), as well The Show (1927) with John Gilbert and Lionel Barrymore, but Freaks goes beyond those earlier efforts by casting actual sideshow performers along with more typical stars. The result remains controversial more than eighty years later; Freaks proved shocking in its own time but may smack too much of exploitation for some modern viewers, even though it works hard to show that its good characters treat the title attractions with humanity and kindness, while its villains mock and reject them. Whatever we make of it, Freaks remains an essential film, one that every cinephile interested in Pre-Codes and classic horror must see at least once.

The story follows various romantic entanglements in the tents of the circus folk. Hans (Harry Earles), a little person, is engaged to the equally tiny Frieda (Daisy Earles) but becomes smitten with seductive trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). She and her strongman lover, Hercules (Henry Victor), delude Hans in order to get his money, with Cleopatra even marrying her small admirer, whom she then plans to poison. Meanwhile, circus clown Phroso (Wallace Ford) and pretty Venus (Leila Hyams) strike up their own romance; they both look out for the sideshow crowd and consider them friends. When Venus threatens to tell the cops about Hercules and Cleopatra, she, Hans, and Phroso all end up in mortal danger, but the circus freaks have their own plans for the cruel, murderous pair.

With their costumes, physical traits, and exotic accents, the career actors in Freaks can be hard to tell apart from the actual circus performers, and perhaps that is intentional on Browning's part. The most ordinary of the bunch are Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams, whose generosity and kindness mark them as kindred spirits despite their hard scrabble lives. The Russian Olga Baclanova puts her foreign appeal to good use as the cold-hearted Cleopatra; her character stands apart from the freaks, literally above them, but the actress fits perfectly in the circus setting. Her dalliance with the German Henry Victor feels like a symbolic union of Eastern menace, especially since Victor went on to play a long string of Nazi roles. Hiding in plain sight is stuttering comedian Roscoe Ates as a circus clown married, awkwardly enough, to a conjoined twin. He, too, fits in with the circus, even though he was an important enough actor to get fourth billing on the film. Despite being under three feet tall, Angelo Rossitto is also one of the movie's professional actors; he racked up 90 screen credits in a career that lasted sixty years. Other, smaller roles are quietly filled by professionals, with Rose Dione as Madame Tetrallini and Edward Brophy as one of the Rollo brothers.

Browning's special cast of actual circus performers begins with Harry Earles, who had made his movie debut in The Unholy Three. He and his real life sister, Daisy, act surprisingly well, and the story depends on them to sell their characters' hopes and heartbreak. They can't pretend they aren't German, but they use that to their advantage; unlike Hercules and Cleopatra, Hans and Frieda seem more vulnerable and lonely because of their foreignness. Their small stature makes them look very young, but Harry was thirty in 1932, and Daisy was twenty-five; both continued circus work for many years and eventually retired. Also acquitting themselves well are the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and "half boy" Johnny Eck, although they are overshadowed in the public memory by Schlitze, the Snow sisters, and the limbless Prince Randian. Other sideshow veterans include armless girls, a bearded lady, a human skeleton, and Josephine Joseph, but the film shows us the very ordinary human lives of these people, who chat and have feelings and raise families just like anyone else. If the picture's gruesome climax paints a different image, with its small, grim figures creeping through the mud, Browning at least tries to suggest that they are really just an oppressed and unfairly treated group of people looking out for their own and dishing out some thoroughly warranted poetic justice.

Freaks was banned, recut, denounced, and relegated to vaults for decades; the version you'll find today is not the original work that Browning intended, and the more upbeat ending was a late addition. Modern viewers are unlikely to have the same response that audiences did in 1932; we are too accustomed to a constant diet of visual spectacles, but still Freaks stands out as something unique in the history of film. For more from Tod Browning, try West of Zanzibar (1928), Mark of the Vampire (1935), and the weirdly wonderful The Devil-Doll (1936). Olga Baclanova plays another cruel temptress in The Man Who Laughs (1928), while Leila Hyams faces bestial threats in Island of Lost Souls (1932). Violet and Daisy Hilton made one other screen appearance in Chained for Life (1952), which capitalizes on their experiences as conjoined twins and adds a murder plot twist. Look for Angelo Rossitto in The Beloved Rogue (1927), Spooks Run Wild (1941), and, decades later, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).