Le club des 3

Lon Chaney known as the man of a thousand faces usually reserved those faces for some grotesque character or monster to which he brought his considerable acting talents to create sympathy. The Unholy Three is an unusual film because he's quite an ordinary man here, but he effects the disguise of an old woman for criminal purposes.

Due to some light fingered activity at a carnival he was employed at Chaney, strong man Victor McLaglen, and midget Harry Earles find themselves unemployed. Chaney who is a ventriloquist decides that the three with their unique physical characteristics and talents can be used to create a nice criminal gang. Chaney in fact goes incognito in the guise of an old woman and Earles plays her grand baby. Personally I think he was way too big to be a toddler, but that's a little dramatic license that director Todd Browning was taking.

Chaney also buys a pet shop and Mae Busch who was a carnival waif goes and lives with them. They also employ Matt Moore as a salesman who is totally clueless about Chaney's and Earles's real identity and what they really do.

Things go wrong and a murder is committed on a job Chaney could not go along on. That sets the rest of the story in motion.

Of course Chaney's guise as an old woman is an astounding success as were all the other characters he created. Yet all the makeup and special effects would be for naught had he not had the acting chops to make it real.

Saying that and saying that because Chaney's virtuosity dominates the film. I thought the ending was truly a cop out. It dulls the impact of Chaney's artistry and it was quite a let down in a film I was ready to rate a notch or two higher.

Still his legion of fans will be well satisfied with this silent version of The Unholy Three remade by MGM for sound, Chaney's one and only sound feature.

The Unholy Three is a magnificent piece of filmmaking. The actors really fit into their roles. The mixture of thriller, comedy and drama is perfect. Tod Browning shows his talents. This film deserves to be shown more. I saw it at the Umea Filmfestival this September with newly written live music that made a great movie even better.

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!

if you're like me, you're thinking "why bother?" about this film. Give it a chance !! it drew me in, was never boring, was original, interesting and truly a very good movie -- yes, even though it's silent. At times, it's even pretty funny !! I feel so strongly about it that i wish it was on again so that i could catch the whole thing (watched 2/3).The acting and the atmosphere are top notch. It's definitely not one of those cliché ridden, predictable schlock movies. The man playing the "baby" is fascinating !! So innocent and convincing one second, then chomping his cigar and acting menacing the next. I give it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars -- i really liked this picture !! I can't think of one downside to it. High praise from me !! And the "baby face Finster" character (gangster midget !!) is a scream.

This Lon Chaney vehicle, directed by the great Tod Browning, is the story of three circus performers who begin to thieve jewels. They open a shop that sells parrots as a front. Chaney, a ventriloquist, dresses up as an old woman, one of his cohorts a man posing as the old woman's son, and the third, a midget, as his infant son (one of the major reasons to see this flick is that the same midget, here named Tweedledeedee, also plays Hans, the midget who marries the acrobat Cleopatra in Browning's later masterpiece, Freaks; in this film he actually is seen smoking a giant cigar, which, in Freaks, his fiancee suggested that he shouldn't smoke). One other circus performer, a woman, knows about their plans. Chaney loves her, but she doesn't reciprocate his feelings. The Unholy Three also hire a young dufus to help with the store. In case they get into trouble, they can always pin it on that guy. The store also sports a chimpanzee, humorously filmed so that he seems as big as a gorilla (when it is to walk through a doorway, it walks through a smaller doorway, for instance, than the actors do).

The story of the film is very interesting. It can also can be quite funny, quite suspenseful, and quite pathetic, especially when Chaney is trying to court the young woman. There's at least one masterful sequence, where a policeman almost discovers the jewels the gang has stolen. They hide it in a toy elephant, which amuses the officer very much. The film also uses ventriloquism quite marvelously - I assume that a lot of the audience of this film in 1925 only knew of ventriloquism by second-hand knowledge - they just knew that ventriloquists could throw their voices, not knowing what it would actually look or sound like. In a silent movie then, you could take full advantage of the audience's ignorance. When Madame O'Grady (Chaney's aka) is trying to sell parrots that don't actually talk as talking parrots, she throws her voice to fool the customers. Browning actually shows that the parrots are supposed to be speaking by drawing speech bubbles on the film in front of the birds! The climax also uses ventriloquism wonderfully: Chaney throws his voice to a man who is on the stand, apparently testifying - he moves his lips, but Chaney supplies the voice. Of course, we know that's ridiculous, but only a few in 1925 would have scoffed. 8/10.