This was fantastic! Campy but seriously twisted. This is the first Chaney film I've seen and he is really great. He has such an expressive face, perfect for silent cinema. The rest of the cast really hold their own as well, particularly Crawford and John George as Cojo.

I didn't even recognize Joan Crawford! It seems that make up and hairdo from the 20's can make a person look completely different.

Five years before Freaks, Tod Browning made another traveling circus potboiler in The Unknown, and it's a strange and beautiful little piece of twist-ending irony. A young Joan Crawford plays a woman torn between three men - her demanding father, the strongman who loves her, and an armless knife-thrower played with increasing intensity by Lon Chaney who is obsessed with her. He's great, and I thought wow, did he really have that foot dexterity, but no, someone else is playing his legs, putting cigarettes in his mouth and so on... I'm still impressed by the dedication and trickery. Crawford's Nanon has a phobia about being held, so this armless man is just about the only man she can stand. As it turns out, Chaney's Alonzo isn't so 'armless after all, and it gets really weird from there, a carnival tale of jealousy, murder and mutilation like no other. It's kind of what O. Henry might have written after a particularly lurid nightmare, and a great precursor to Freaks.