While very short at just 50 minutes, this film packs an emotional punch and is macabre in a way that is unique to the genre of horror movies. I won't spoil the big moments, but the tone is set from the beginning as we find ourselves at the circus performance with an armless man (Lon Chaney) hurling knives and firing a rifle at his partner (a young Joan Crawford). As we later see Chaney (and a real-life armless double) manipulate objects and do things like smoke with this feet, we're reminded of the film director Tod Browning would make five years later, 'Freaks'. Chaney's performance throughout the film is brilliant, and he dramatically captures angst, jealousy, and pain. John George turns in a strong performance as the little person in the circus who is Chaney's friend, and the two of them create a striking pair. While the overall tone of the movie is deliciously creepy, the romance Joan Crawford warms up to with a circus strong-man (Norman Kerry) is sweet, and Browning uses a piece of gauze over the camera lens to create an idyllic, dreamy feel to some of their scenes. The uncredited score that was used on the TCM showing was also fantastic. Great film, especially for 1927.

This is a wonderful vehicle for two great stars -- Lon Chaney at his zenith and Joan Crawford in her earliest days. Joan's character has some very unusual hangups about men which Lon Chaney's supposedly armless "Alonzo" is well equipped to satisfy... or so it seems. But there's more to Alonzo than meets the eye (he actually has arms!) and Joan's extreme sexual reticence (only on screen, btw...) melts when she takes a closer look at the strongman. Thus Joan goes from being a prude dripping with sensuality to being highly conventional, but Chaney's character just gets more and more freakish in his behavior. Sullenly brooding one moment, laughing maniacally the next, Alonzo is a sociopath whose antics sometimes veer into cartoonishness but never fail to enthrall. The final scene, where Chaney dies protecting Joan who nearly dies protecting Chaney's strong-man rival from having his arms torn off (how perfect!) is absolutely priceless."The Unknown" features a grippingly offbeat and suspenseful tale, beautifully acted and skillfully shot and edited. Unless you cannot tolerate silent films you must see this one -- cannot recommend too highly.

Little, simple and synthetic, but astonishing and great for its content, "The Unknown" is one of the zeniths of silent cinema, a bright and flooring horror mélo, grotesque and devastating, absolutely mad and unpredictable in its overturns, monstrosities and controversies. Here circus is a metaphor of world, where everything is art-made, hallucinated, petty, and the sane people are the real monsters, more than dwarfs and mutilated ones. Helped by the alienated and masochistic performance by legendary Lon Chaney, made up as a real mutilated man, Browning made a work of pure cinema, which strikes over the visual surface, in the depth of subconscious, in a state of delirium and horror which looks like dream, and it's indeed the purest, more secret and perverse side of human mind. His ability to manipulate pictures and psychologies makes this film a compendium about destructive vortex of human passions, and about the thin lines which separate the opposites: human and beastly, true and fake, sane and insane, hate and love, which mix up all together and estrange points of views in a confused turmoil, which lasts even after the mocking and tragic ending.**** out of 5

A criminal on the run (Lon Chaney) hides in a circus and seeks to possess the daughter (Joan Crawford) of the ringmaster at any cost.Love, crime, a hidden identity, and horses on treadmills all come together for this silent classic, now mostly forgotten. And it all blends together beautifully well, with Chaney taking the lead and everyone following in his path.Some of the best parts are the use of feet for smoking and knife-throwing. How much is Chaney and how much is his double is hard to say exactly. While it all looks like him, clever camera tricks may have fooled me. Either way, people who use their feet as hands are pretty cool.Reviews at the time were quite positive, as they should have been. Photoplay appreciated the "macabre atmosphere" and Harrison's Reports noted it was "artistically acted and skillfully directed". Variety was less praising, calling the movie "not as great a picture as it might have been", but what more did they want?This is definitely one of Chaney's strongest performances in his later years. That may be strange to say, but it is true. Although Chaney peaked in 1924-1925, his career was already over by 1930. This one is must-see.