Dracula's director started in carnivals and sideshows

Tod Browning was a Hollywood director who began in circuses and carnivals, and he went on to direct Dracula in 1931 and Freaks in 1932. The Library of Congress added Dracula to the National Film Registry in 2000 and Freaks in 1994, though Britain had banned Freaks until 1963.

Dracula's success launched a decade of Universal monster movies, and critics have traced the modern horror film to Browning. Before that, he made ten films with the silent-film actor Lon Chaney. Relay has seven of Browning's films, four of them with Chaney.

Where did Browning come from?

As a young man Browning worked in circuses and carnivals as a clown, a sideshow barker and an escape artist. In 1913 the director D. W. Griffith hired him at Biograph Studios in New York, and he moved from acting to directing.

His main partner was Chaney, the silent-film star, in ten films from 1919 to 1929. When Browning turned to Dracula, Universal wanted Chaney for the title role. Chaney died before filming, and Bela Lugosi, who had played the part on Broadway, took it. Browning had no final cut, and the cinematographer Karl Freund shaped much of the film's atmosphere.

Freaks cast real sideshow performers, among them Harry Earles and the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. MGM cut it to 64 minutes after poor test screenings. Many critics saw it as the end of Browning's career, and his freedom at MGM was greatly restricted afterwards. He retired in 1939. The critic Andrew Sarris is often quoted as calling it one of the most compassionate films ever made.

Which Browning films are on Relay?

The Unknown (1927)

Chaney plays Alonzo, a circus knife thrower who seems to have no arms. He has both and hides them, along with a double thumb that would give him away. Joan Crawford, then very young and a year from stardom, plays Nanon, the woman he loves.

The film was long thought lost until a print turned up in France. The George Eastman Museum restored it in 2022, and Criterion released it in 2023 in a set with Freaks and The Mystic. Critics often call it the best of the Browning and Chaney films.

Drama

The Unholy Three (1925)

Three former sideshow performers pose as a family and run a pet shop that fronts for burglary. Chaney plays Echo, a ventriloquist who passes as an old woman. Harry Earles, who plays the small-statured crook Tweedledee, later played Hans in Freaks.

The film was a success, and a 1930 remake was Chaney's only sound film. He died that August.

Crime

The 13th Chair (1929)

This was Browning's first sound film, a mystery based on Bayard Veiller's 1916 Broadway play. A fake medium holds a seance to find a murderer in British India, and Bela Lugosi plays the police inspector, two years before Dracula.

Mystery

Four more

Outside the Law (1920) has Chaney in two roles, a gangster and a servant. White Tiger (1923) follows con artists who use a fake chess-playing machine, modelled on an 18th-century hoax that hid a human player inside. The Mystic (1925) stars Aileen Pringle as a phony Hungarian psychic who swindles high society. Where East Is East (1929) was the last of the ten films with Chaney.

What to watch first

The Unknown is the one to begin with, and one of three films in Criterion's Browning set. The Unholy Three shows Chaney in his most disguised role, and The 13th Chair is the film to see for Lugosi before he became Dracula.