Tod Browning's sideshow shockers : The unknown ; The mystic
2023,
DVD
, 1 videodisc (141 min.) :
61
holds /
7 copies
4504504
Summary/Review:
"The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood's edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. THE MYSTIC tells the tale of a confederacy of unsavory characters conspire to cheat an heiress out of her fortune by way of conducting fraudulent séances. THE UNKNOWN: An unrequited infatuation leads a circus knife-thrower on the run from the law into a troubled state, but when the circus owner discovers the desperate man's secret identity, things become markedly worse. Bringing together two of his defining works, this cabinet of pre-Code curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society's most downtrodden."--