The Unknown

Tod Browning
1927

Tod Browning's "Freaks" is the most popular example of the drunkard/director's fascination with the American sideshow and its grotesquerie, yet half a decade earlier (before the advent of talkies) Browning put pen to paper and film to camera to create gothic circus picture worthy of his bizarre tastes.

Lon Chaney plays "Alonzo the Armless," a man who earns his bread by chucking knives with his toes at rotating targets. Strapped around these bullseyes is slinky-slender Nanon (Joan Crawford), a seemingly perfect mol for Alonzo due to her bizarre fear of men's hands. Of course, Alonzo has two arms, two hands, and an extra third thumb to top it off. His charade, made possible by the aid of a wicked leather girdle, is one of necessity due to Alonzo's habit of murdering people (indeed, Nanon's oafish father becomes a victim). Because of his cursed arms, Alonzo is unable to wed Nanon so he finds a way to remove them surgically. While in recuperation his ladylove, with the aid of beefcake Malabar the Mighty, manages to overcome her handphobia, and thus leave old Alonzo totally fucked.

The gothic air and low-class life of the circus folk give the picture a leg up in the pulp dept. Plus the conscious choice of centering on a murderous anti-hero as protagonist makes the picture outwardly lurid. While Alonzo gets his deserved comeuppance, he is by far more sympathetic than Malabar, a doofus just asking to be a hate-magnet. If you were a lame-o in highschool who never got the girl and got beat up by alpha males then you probably shouldn't watch this movie, it'll piss you off.

Review by Brett A. Scieszka