The Unknown (1927 film)
The Unknown is a 1927 American silent horror film directed by Tod Browning and featuring Lon Chaney as carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless and Joan Crawford as the scantily clad carnival girl he hopes to marry.
Film historian Ken Hanke considers the film to be in many respects the best of Browning's films with Lon Chaney.Burt Lancaster said that Chaney's portrayal in The Unknown featured “one of the most compelling and emotionally exhausting scenes I have ever seen an actor do.” Chaney did remarkable and convincing collaborative scenes with real-life armless double Paul Desmuke (sometimes credited as Peter Dismuki), whose legs and feet were used to manipulate objects such as knives and cigarettes in frame with Chaney's upper body and face.
As with Browning's later sound film Freaks (1932), contemporary reviewers were sometimes less appreciative. "A visit to the dissecting room in a hospital would be quite as pleasant," opined the New York Evening Post, "and at the same time more instructive." Modern viewers can discern the same macabre style of this film (and other Browning-Chaney collaborations) in later productions ranging from the 1930s Universal Studios horror films to the 1960s Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents programs.
The Unknown Five
The Unknown Five is an anthology of fantasy fiction short stories edited by D. R. Bensen and illustrated by Edd Cartier, the fourth of a number of anthologies drawing their contents from the classic magazine Unknown of the 1930s-40s. It was first published in paperback by Pyramid Books in January 1964. The cover title of this first edition was The Unknown 5; the numeral was spelled out on the title page and copyright statement. The book was reprinted by Jove/HBJ in October 1978. It has also been translated into German. It was a follow-up to a companion anthology, The Unknown, issued in 1963.
The book collects five tales by various authors, together with an introduction by the editor. All are from Unknown but the Asimov piece, which had been slated to appear therein in 1943 but was not then published due to the demise of the magazine.
Contents
Unknown
Unknown or The Unknown may refer to:
Mathematics
Film
Music
Other uses
The Unknown (1915 drama film)
The Unknown is a 1915 silent film drama produced by Jesse Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by George Melford and stars Lou Tellegen, Theodore Roberts and Dorothy Davenport.
Cast
Preservation status
A print of this film is preserved in the Library of Congress collection.
