Wednesday, June 20, 2012

"The Unholy Three" (1925)


"The Unholy Three" (1925), directed by Tod Browning, 3 stars

“The Unholy Three” was the third of ten silent films Lon Chaney made with director Tod Browning (known also for sound films such as “Dracula” and “Freaks”).  The film also stars Victor McLaglen as the sideshow strongman, Hercules, and Harry Earles as Tweedledee, a politically incorrect little person billed as “Twenty inches! Twenty years! Twenty pounds! The Twentieth Century Curiosity!”  With Chaney as Echo, the ventriloquist, the men partner to become the pseudonymous unholy three, opting into an ostensibly easy life of crime.  In short order, however, we learn that this is no group of criminal masterminds. But I’m getting a little ahead of their story.

The film begins at a pretty sleazy indoor carnival where performers, including the three principals, a tattooed lady, a sword swallower, and Siamese twins, are flaunting their unique qualities.  Among the onlookers is Mae Busch as the not so sweet Rosie O’Grady.  She busily picks various onlookers' pockets, much to the delight of Echo, who watches her while performing his act.  He’s clearly smitten, but as this is a Lon Chaney film, there’s no chance of their relationship ending well.  In fact, things go in a southerly direction rather quickly.  Tweedledee kicks a young boy in the face for making fun of his height, and the unholy ones together with Rosie escape just as the cops come to call.
After their abrupt departure from the carnival, they pool their resources and open a store that sells birds.  The shop owner is Grandma O'Grady, who is really Echo in drag.  Tweedledee also gets into the act by dressing himself in swaddling clothes and impersonating a toddler (see photo below).  Grandma hires Hector (Matt Moore) as the store's sales clerk, and Rosie immediately takes a shine to him, much to Echo's distress.  But before things deteriorate, Grandma hobbles around the store selling talking parrots to rich patrons by projecting her voice, thus creating the illusion that the birds are speaking to the customers.  Their words appear on the screen in animated cartoon bubbles, a nice touch.  Because the homes where the parrots wind up are regularly robbed soon after they arrive, the cops come once again to call.

In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock, a detective interviews the unholy three.  Tweedledee has stashed stolen jewelry in a toy elephant which the detective inadvertently kicks.  He then picks up the toy, begins playing with it, and in the process, hears something rattle from within.  The camera cuts between the detective's examination of the object and the fearful faces of the unholy trio, each increasingly worried that the man will stumble upon the hidden treasure.

He doesn't, so the group decides to implicate Hector in the robbery and then flee the scene of the crime, accompanied by a fifth companion: a giant chimpanzee.  As Hector goes on trial for theft, the fugitives hole up in a mountain hideaway, getting increasingly jittery, greedy, and treacherous in their isolation.  In a final fit of pique, Tweedledee lets loose the chimp and, sorry to say, things go very badly.

At almost 86 minutes, “The Unholy Three” seems a bit overlong.  The attraction that Rosie develops for Hector doesn’t really ring true—at least not in movie terms.  Matt Moore plays Hector as a four-eyed wimp, and Mae Busch’s Rosie is way too sassy and street-wise to find much use for a guy like that.  But somebody other than Chaney needs to get the girl, and Hector, assuming he's found not guilty, is the only guy around.


The film, which cost just over $100k to make, grossed over seven times that amount.  Its financial success, combined with the prospect of adding not only multiple faces but multiple voices to his repertoire, induced Chaney to remake "The Unholy Three" five years later as his first and only sound film.

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