Co-produced and directed by Tod Browning, this above average silent crime drama was later remade as a sound picture with two members of the original cast, Lon Chaney and Harry Earles. Based on the novel by Tod Robbins, with scenario by Waldemar Young, Chaney plays Professor Echo, a ventriloquist, who teams with dwarf Earles, dubbed Tweedledee, and strongman Victor McLaglen, who's called Hercules, to scam unawares customers into buying parrots from their pet shop.Initially, all three were in a sideshow during which Echo used Rosie O'Grady (Mae Busch) to pickpocket its customers. After a police raid, Echo convinces Tweedledee and Hercules to join him, forming "The Unholy Three", who along with O'Grady and an innocent, unsuspecting employee Hector MacDonald (Matt Moore) set up shop.Echo uses his gift to make the parrots appear to talk to him, dressed as an old woman and pretending to be O'Grady's 'Granny', in order to fool their customers into paying high prices for the otherwise ordinary birds. Echo is therefore in charge of the trio though Tweedledee, who pretends to be an infant around others, later connives with the dimwitted Hercules to exclude Echo from a jewelry robbery on Christmas Eve, during which they kill Mr. Arlington (Charles Wellesley, uncredited), who'd been an unsatisfied parrot customer.The three then decide to pin the murder on their ignorant employee MacDonald, with whom Rosie had fallen in love, much to the dismay of Echo who'd wanted her for himself. However, the trio's mistrust of one another and a personal plea from Rosie, who'd been taken against her will to their mountain hideout, to Echo eventually unravels things. A pet shop gorilla figures in the outcome. The film effectively ends with MacDonald's trial, during which Echo uses his gift to satisfy an agreement with Rosie.Matthew Betz, who plays the detective, Edward Connelly, who plays the judge, William Humphrey, who plays MacDonald's defense attorney, and E. Alyn Warren, who plays the prosecuting attorney, also appear.

"The Unholy Three" is not a Lon Chaney horror film but rather an interesting crime caper drama.We meet the main characters in a seedy side show. First is Echo the ventriloquist (Chaney) his "girl friend" and pick pocket artist Rosie O'Grady (Mae Busch), strongman Hercules (Victor McLaglan) and baby faced midget Tweedledee (Harry Earles). Echo, fed up with the carnival life devises a plan whereby he, Hercules and Tweedldee would become the Unholy Three and commit a series of robberies. Echo disguises himself as "Grandma" Moses and the midget as her baby grand daughter. They hire wimpish Hector McDonald (Matt Moore) who is unaware of the goings on, to run the store.The cover if you will, is a bird shop (really?) where Echo uses his ventriloquist skills to convince rich customers to buy what they think is a talking parrot. Later when the customer discovers that the bird cannot talk they call "Grandma" Moses who goes to their home to case the place for a robbery. Hector develops a crush on Rosie and she at first doesn't reciprocate. The robberies are going well for the group until one night when Rosie shows interest in Hector. The three are about to embark on another robbery when Echo showing his jealousy, stays behind to spoil Rosie's date. Hercules and the midget proceed on their own but in their haste murder the victim Mr. Arlington (Charles Wellesley). Echo is furious but goes along with the plan of pinning the crime on the hapless Hector.The trio and Rosie flee to an isolated cabin as Hector is arrested for the murder. Then it gets interesting.Lon Chaney as usual disappears into his character(s). His depiction of the aged grandmother is another of his great characterizations. He literally becomes a convincing old lady. His Echo displays a wide range of emotions through Chaney's remarkable pantomime talents: dominance, fear, hate, kindness, cruelty etc. The romance between Rosie and Hector is a little hard to believe given her background. Hector does mention at one point though, that he too has a past but does not elaborate.Given that Echo saves Hector, one has to wonder why he was not charged with the robberies but seems to get off scott free. Does Chaney get the girl in the end, what do you think?Remade as a sound feature in 1930.

Murderous anomalies from the circus sideshow were "old hat" by the time director Tod Browning Helmed the infamous FREAKS picture in 1932, which almost single-handedly brought on 81 years of film censorship in America (and counting). In 1925, Browning put out this silent--THE UNHOLY THREE--in which one thing leads to another, potentially posing a very sticky wicket for what an Intertitle card here labels "the grim machinery of the law." Sure, you can modify an American snuff chamber with his and her electric chairs (complete with a "cry room" for the young children, as in the Rosenberg Case). But how the dickens do you construct a triple-hanging scaffold for a strong man, a ventriloquist, and a 20-inch midget? The former's neck strength and the latter's lack of weight probably would leave both dangling and thrashing about indefinitely, while the man in the middle's dummy would be screaming bloody murder! Many spectators would die laughing--just the opposite of the desired outcome! Browning solves this conundrum by having a gorilla kill the strongman and the midget (off-screen, of course). Since the voice thrower sings for the court, he gets off with a song.

When I was a kid I was an avid reader of Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and it was there I first heard about the director Tod Browning. He and his work were prominently featured in the pages of FM, where the (still missing) London After Midnight was often lamented as the Holy Grail of lost films. There were also frequent references to The Unholy Three in both its silent and talkie incarnations. It took me decades to finally catch up with the silent version, and my response is kind of schizo; objectively, I'm aware that in a number of ways it's absurd, and yet it's great fun, and highly entertaining. And the main reason the movie works so well, I believe, is the sheer charisma of Lon Chaney.Chaney and Browning worked together many times, but this was their biggest box office success. Despite the general impression to the contrary their collaborations were not exactly horror films. In fact, as far as I can determine not one of their movies featured any supernatural elements; even the vampire of London After Midnight turns out to be a police inspector in disguise. Most of the Browning/Chaney films are crime melodramas with bizarre details stirred into the mix, often involving people from the lowest rungs of show business, such as circuses and carnivals. Chaney's characters in these stories are often afflicted with an intense, unrequited passion for a young woman (most memorably and disturbingly in The Unknown), and his behavior and actions are affected by this obsession, usually to his disadvantage, sometimes fatally so.By the time The Unholy Three was produced Browning had developed his recurring themes and motifs into a highly effective, time-tested formula. His directorial technique is stylish in an unobtrusive way: for special emphasis he'll highlight shadows thrown on a wall, forming a silhouette of the three title characters, but otherwise he generally avoids flamboyant touches. With a story like this, he doesn't need them. The synopsis has been outlined elsewhere, but briefly it involves a trio of crooks from the sideshow world: Professor Echo the ventriloquist (Chaney) who disguises himself as an old lady, a strong man (Victor MacLaglen), and a midget (Harry Earles) who masquerades as a baby. A pet store serves as a front for their activities. The trio is actually is quintet, as they are accompanied by a thief named Rosie (Mae Busch) and a bespectacled patsy named Hector (Matt Moore) who is somehow oblivious that his employers are, well, not what they seem. Hector takes everything in stride. It's perfectly normal to him that the pet shop where he works offers not only birds and rabbits but also a dangerous gorilla in a big cage. So hey, if Hector takes it for granted, why shouldn't we? The plot turns on a jewel heist that goes awry, in part because of Prof. Echo's jealousy over Rosie. However, in this film the story is secondary to the sinister atmospherics.While it's Chaney's performance that drives the film the supporting cast is solid -- more so, I feel, than in the talkie remake -- and the characters' interactions have a "rightness" that persuades us to overlook numerous credibility issues. As in the best Hitchcock films, we're willing to ignore gaping plot holes in order to savor the set pieces. One of the most effective sequences features a police inspector who interrogates the trio in the wake of the jewel heist. He's unaware that the jewels he seeks are inside a toy elephant at his feet, a toy that supposedly belongs to the "baby." The scene is suspenseful and funny, and, for me, the sight of Harry Earles disguised as a baby is almost as creepy as anything in an out-and-out horror movie.The unlikely twists increase to the point of craziness in the final scenes, yet the story follows the consistent internal logic of a deeply weird dream. It's no surprise this was such a big hit in its day. I was fortunate enough to see a newly restored print of this film at the Museum of Modern Art this summer, back to back with the talkie remake. The silent version in particular went over quite well, though admittedly there were chuckles when a title card glibly announces the outcome of Prof. Echo's trial. Afterward in the lobby viewers were enthusiastic about the film, and about Lon Chaney. Seventy-five years after his death audiences are still impressed with his magnetism. So here's a tip of the hat to Forry Ackerman, who saw the Browning/Chaney films when they were new, and was right about this one all along!