On demand: "The Unknown"

MGM's 1927 silent The Unknown sets out a series of deeply dysfunctional, often outright perverse relationships that almost certainly owe less to the Spanish legend the screenwriters claim to be adapting than certain showbiz whispers of the period. Even before Freaks, director Tod Browning was drawn to the travelling circus as a lusty, salty miniature of polite society. Here, he establishes that an amputee knife thrower trading as Alonzo the Armless (Lon Chaney) has vowed to protect glamorous assistant Nanon (Joan Crawford) from the brutes and strongmen who would manhandle her, only for a major revelation - a twist of the arm, we might say - to throw all of the above information into fresh doubt. It's a weird story to begin with, made weirder still nowadays by the fact the twentysomething Crawford doesn't yet look anything like the Crawford of Hollywood lore, while a surgeon who looks exactly like Claude Reins turns out to be an actor who isn't Claude Reins. (If the film teaches us anything, it's that bodies are treacherous; they can betray us, and anyone else looking on.) And yet: the film is non-creaky, defiantly alive, as alert to the horrors and wonders of the human anatomy as any subsequent David Cronenberg feature. Each intertitle-delivered twist is a further jolt of electricity to the Frankenstein's monster of a plot; you watch the whole get more convoluted as it goes along - or, rather, you note how its contortions mirror those of its own characters. It can't possibly be headed in that direction, you tell yourself. Oh yes it can, retorts Browning, with a cackle in his voice and a malevolent glint in his eye. Strap in, then, but this is a silent movie that still grips and moves a crowd today, possibly because the horrors of love circa 1927 aren't entirely far removed from those you and I have known in the present day. "It was just something in here that stung like the lash of a whip," says Alonzo, gesturing to his heart, playing down his emotions, setting up Browning's ultra-macabre finale. I mean... oof.

The Unknown is now streaming via YouTube, and available to rent via Prime Video.