Tod Browning

The Unknown

The Unknown

The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, The Unknown features a wrenchingly physical performance from “the Man of a Thousand Faces” as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he flings daggers with his feet) whose dastardly infatuation with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford)—a woman, it just so happens, who cannot bear to be touched by the hands of any man—drives him to unspeakable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, disfigurement, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from the lurid premise.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1927
  • 67 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • English

Available In

Collector's Set

Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Blu-ray Box Set

2 Discs

$48.96

Collector's Set

Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

DVD Box Set

2 Discs

$27.96

The Unknown
Cast
Lon Chaney
Alonzo the Armless
Norman Kerry
Malabar the Mighty
Joan Crawford
Nanon
Nick De Ruiz
Zanzi
John George
Cojo
Frank Lanning
Costra
John St. Polis
Surgeon
Julian Rivero
Man in theater audience
Billy Seay
The Little Wolf
Tom Amandares
“Gypsy”
Louise Emmons
“Gypsy” woman
Italia Frandi
Girl in audience
Venezia Frandi
Woman in audience
Polly Moran
Lady’s maid in audience
Margaret Bert
Fortune teller
Paul Desmuke
Lon Chaney’s leg double
Credits
Director
Tod Browning
Story by
Tod Browning
Scenario by
Waldemar Young
Titles by
Joe Farnham
Settings by
Cedric Gibbons
Settings by
Richard Day
Wardrobe by
Lucia Coulter
Photographed by
Merritt B. Gerstad
Film editor
Harry Reynolds
Film editor
Errol Taggart

Current

Tod Browning’s Ballyhoo Art
Tod Browning’s Ballyhoo Art

The director of Freaks, The Unknown, and The Mystic tested the limits of early-Hollywood taste with his provocative visions of carnival life and society’s outcasts.

By Farran Smith Nehme