Show, The (DVD)

From director Tod Browning comes this delirious tale of jealousy and murder starring John Gilbert, Renee Adoree and Lionel Barrymore. Welcome to the Palace of Illusions, a carnival show whose main attraction is a lurid performance of the Dance of the Seven Veils featuring Salome (Adoree) and Cock Robin (Gilbert), the philandering cad she adores. So when a jealous hoodlum (Barrymore) switches swords in a failed attempt to behead Robin, he hides out in Salome's room while his rival plots in the attic above to finish what he started. Hailed as the Edgar Allan Poe of cinema, Browning made his reputation through a masterful series of bizarre melodramas - dark, twisted movies that continue to shock and amaze. Thought lost for nearly 50 years, The Show is one of Browning's most unsettling films, made all the more powerful by his use of angles and light to create a stylish masterwork seething with mood and suspense.