"The Unknown" is the first film of Lon Chaney that I have seen. I recognized almost immediately that it would not be the last. Chaney has something that seems wholly unique. He is brutish and civilized, nefarious and pitiable. It can be exhausting to watch him.The film also stars a young, and possibly pre-stardom Joan Crawford, who indeed credited Chaney with starting her career, as his focus in front of the camera inspired her to do better as a performer."The Unknown" is about a troupe of circus performers. Chaney is Alonzo the Armless, who shoots rifles and throws knives with his feet. Joan Crawford is Nanon, the object of his attention on and off the stage. There is also the actor Norman Kerry as Malabar the Mighty, a strongman who also loves Nanon, however, Nanon has a fear of men's arms...Thus the stage is set for a bizarre love triangle in a sideshow world in which everything is turned up the highest: Crawford's beauty and sexiness, Malabar's strength and bravado, and Chaney's ugliness and humanity.The ending, even after all these years, will make you cringe, but it is Chaney you will remember; his indelible, ugly face, alive with cruelty and pain.

Very good story. Joan Crawford is lovely and Norman Kerry is pleasant and agreeable. It is a shame that some footage is missing from the early part of the film. No indication is made about what the missing footage contained in the print I saw. A few title cards with a summary stating what happened during the missing section would have been nice. Lon Chaney is very good and quite convincing as a man driven insane by unrequited love.

Though Browning is known best for directing Dracula (1931) and Chaney is most known as The Phantom of the Opera (1925), this little known thriller is their masterpiece.The Unknown (1927) concerns a seemingly armless knife thrower named Alonzo (Lon Chaney) who's really a murderer on the run. He pretends to be armless so his deformed thumb won't give him away. Alonzo becomes obsessed with the ringmaster's beautiful daughter Nanon (Joan Crawford) and seeks to possess her not only sexually, but emotionally as well. Luckily for Alonzo, she is frightened of men's hands (it's implied that she has suffered abuse in the past), which makes her comfortable around him. Alonzo wants to marry Nanon and believes she finds out about his true condition on their wedding night, she will forgive his deception. That all gets thrown out the window when he murders her father and Nanon sees that the killer has a double thumb. Plus, she's falling for the sideshow's handsome strongman(Norman Kerry). From there on, Alonzo unravels more and more, leading to the film's suspense-filled conclusion.A story as bizarre as this one could only be made plausible in the otherworldly universe of silent film. Having worked in a sideshow during his younger years, Browning often returned to such settings in his films (The Show (1927), The Unholy Three (1925), Freaks (1932)). As usual, he renders a world that is sinister and off-kilter. Lon Chaney also gives his best performance as Alonzo. It's mind-blowing how he takes such a creepy and violent character and manages to make him sympathetic. Though he's such a terrible person, Chaney somehow has you rooting for him to win the girl over. The scene toward the end where he has a mental breakdown has to be one of the most chilling things I've ever witnessed.If The Unknown has a flaw, then it would be the ending. It's a tad rushed and the resolution could have been handled better. I'd like to know more about Nanon's reaction to Alonzo's actions, for instance. Oh well. That's more of a nitpick than a real issue that topples the whole picture. The Unknown is essential for those who've only seen the static 1931 Dracula and think Browning was a hack, and those who believe Chaney relied solely on make-up to dazzle audiences.

Have the fans of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney ever stopped to consider the utter absurdity of the premise of THE UNKNOWN? A fugitive from the law must hide deformed thumbs that would give him away. The best idea he can think of is to pretend to be armless and get a job in the circus throwing knives with his feet. Before he can carry out this ideal plan, he only needs to manage enough pedal dexterity to be able to miss by inches his female partner played by Joan Crawford. And he does! After he overcomes this one small obstacle, he masters all the other tasks he had once performed with his hands: smoking, eating, and drinking. It boggles the mind!As for Chaney's acting, he could be great; he could also be God-awful. In THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA he at least had that wonderful make-up to hide behind. In this film his emotionalism is annoying and schmaltzy.