"Not often does one see so powerful a photodrama as The Unholy Three... After viewing this production the figures that have passed upon the screen still cling to one's mind and one feels like talking about the strange and unusual tale... This pictorial effort is a startling original achievement which takes its place with the very best productions that have ever been made."
The New York Times

"This is the greatest picture I have seen to date."
Film Daily

"There is nothing in the world of the photoplay so rare as intelligent, original and authentically thrilling melodrama. This makes The Unholy Three all the more important, for it is, by all odds, the most exciting and terrifying of all screen thrillers."
New York Herald Tribune

"We don't believe we have ever witnessed a more gripping, better produced or better acted picture."
Moving Picture World

"It was President Wilson who used to read detective stories to ease his mind. He would have liked The Unholy Three."
Time

"It is one of the finest pictures ever made, due to the able and clever direction of Tod Browning... Lon Chaney gives a perfect performance as the ventriloquist."
Photoplay

"A classic of screen literature."
San Francisco Daily News

"To Mr. Browning, all honor."
The New Yorker

"Crowded with action, suspense and thrills, this latest Chaney film of the underworld stands among the foremost melodramas screened for some time."
Exhibitors Trade Review

"..it is curiously muted compared to the macabre fancies dreamed up later in the series. But there is many a pleasing frisson to be had from the weird family circle formed by three carnival refugees...Slightly tongue-in-cheek...it also displays considerable subtlety in depicting the perverse passions that tear the trio apart."
Tom Milne, TimeOut Film Guide

"A marvelous piece of fantasy and one of the most bizarre films in the history of the cinema, tinged with moments of black humor."
Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films

Compiled by Bret Wood