Freaks
by Tod Browning
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Actor: Henry Victor, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Wallace FordDirector: Tod Browning
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Dwain Esper
Writer: Al Boasberg
Writer: Charles MacArthur
Writer: Clarence Aaron 'Tod' Robbins
Writer: Edgar Allan Woolf
Writer: Leon Gordon
Writer: Willis Goldbeck
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 64 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Freaks
DVD Review: Most Disturbing
Summary: 5 Stars
Easily one the most disturbing and frightening films ever made. A must for any horror buff and a must for any film enthusiast! DVD Review: Brilliant and Daring Cinematic Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
In the early 1930s, Hollywood had discovered the monster movie and the monster movie was all the rage. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and many other monsters like them were huge at the box office. At the time, Tod Browning was a hugely successful silent film director who had a major film hit with DRACULA. Browning had been trying for several years to adapt a short story, Tod Robbins' "Spurs", into a feature film with Lon Chaney scheduled to appear. However, it took the success of DRACULA before Browning was finally given the go.
FREAKS was a huge success at it's initial screening in San Diego, but the movie was so unusual for its time (instead of fictional monsters the film was filled with real-life human oddities) that many found it squeamish and frightening and the studio pulled the film and had it re-edited. The movie found some critical success and was very popular in some cities, but overall the film was critically panned. Critics and many viewers found the sideshow setting of the film, with Siamese twins, armless women, pinheads, bearded ladies, dwarves, and a limbless man to be just too unnatural. It was banned in many cities across the U.S. as well as in Britain and Australia and MGM pulled the film from circulation. Fueled by a spirit of rebellion, the movie had a renaissance in the 1960s which continued for over thirty years until the film being added to the National Film Registry by the National Film Preservation Board in 1994.
The basic plot of the film revolves around the dwarf Hans (Harry Earles) and his serious infatuation for a regular-sized female trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Hans is engaged to a female dwarf, Frieda (Daisy Earles--Harry's sister in real life), but when Cleo joins their circus, he becomes obsessed with her beauty. Cleo encourages Hans' advances, but really just thinks of him as a toy to play with, even making fun of him with other "normal" people at the circus behind his back. Cleo's real lover is the strong man Hercules (Henry Victor), who makes his living lousing upon wealthy women. Though Cleo isn't rich, Hans treats her like a queen and when she learns that Hans has inherited a fortune she and Hercules plan a way to get all of Hans' money. She marries Hans with the intention of slowly poisoning him over time until he dies. But the "freaks" at the circus learn of Cleo and Hercules' plan and set into motion a plan of revenge of their very own.
At the time of its initial release, many people found FREAKS horrifying because of the human oddities. Some would argue that we are now too desensitized by all the graphic and horrifying things we've been exposed to over the past two generations to find the film as frightening as it once must have seen. I would like to think it's more because we've become more sensitive and compassionate about all people (of course, a movie like FREAKS would never get made today). Whatever the case, the unusual people in FREAKS aren't disturbing and shocking. With our modern lens, audiences can see beyond the "freaks" and see them as the people they really were (as they movie says, "They are all God's children) and see the movie for the excellent film it is.
The official DVD version includes an audio commentary with film historian David Skal, an almost hour-long "making-of" featurette, and alternative endings to the movie (however, the original ending of the movie that shows what happens to Hercules seems to have been lost forever). I really enjoyed all of the special features. They are filled with all kinds of information about the movie, the performers, and the history of cinema.
DVD Review: Almost Documentary of the Carni Life!!! You must own this movie...
Summary: 5 Stars
The most interesting thing about Director Tod Browning is that he was actually part of a traveling circus as a youngster. Maybe that is why instead of trying to use makeup to create his characters, Browning cast persons with real deformities. He draws on his personal experience in a lot for this film.
Tod Browning is seeking to teach a very important moral lesson with this film. Everyone considered to be a "Freak" is inherently good and trusting while the two Villains in the film are "Normal". Cleopatra the trapeze artist marries the sideshow owner Hans (A Tiny Person) after she learns of a large inheritance. She is in cahoots with strongman Hercules to take all of Han's money. The rest of the cast finds out about this plot and sets out to stop it from happening.
This movie is an absolute Cult Classic. You must see it so that you can tell all of your friends about it. It's kind of like Reefer Madness. You just can't believe what you are seeing and that these people are real and are in a movie made in 1932.
DVD Review: A Tod Browning Classic!
Summary: 4 Stars
It is hard to believe that this film was produced by THE prestige studio in Hollywood and shot on their lot, using their personnel, and their illustrious name. In 1931, MGM's head of production, Irving Thalberg, decided to take on the overwhelming success of competing studio Universal, and their success with such horror films as Dracula and Frankenstein, and create his own niche in that genre. Drawing on a Tod Robbins novel called Spurs, screenwriter Willis Goldbeck created a world even more self-contained than that of Grand Hotel, the warped world of Freaks, the garish world of the circus sideshow, replete with bearded lady, vain acrobats, simpering pinheads, even a hermaphrodite. Thalberg's reaction to the script was: "Well, I asked for something horrifying." The film was shot in 36 days on the Culver City lot, using the same director from Dracula, Tod Browning, with real freaks brought in to populate this bizarre world. When the freaks were given the run of the lot and the MGM commissary, even the most hardened showbiz veterans were shocked! Upon its release in 1932, the film received so much bad press and created such ill will that MGM was forced to withdraw the release from circulation and suffered a loss of approximately $164,000 in Depression-era money. This pre-Code film was a misfire in judgment for the studio, who had the film pulled from distribution for the next 17 years, when it was then picked up by an independent New York distributor for a four-wall campaign in 1949.DVD Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Freaks is a horror movie whose power to shock has arguably grown greater as the nation has moved towards political correctness; short, unpolished, and disturbing, it's a movie worth seeing.
Description of Freaks
Treachery is discovered amongst a traveling circus sideshow. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/13/2005 Starring: Wallace Ford Roscoe Ates Run time: 62 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Tod BrowningTod Browning, who directed Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula, stepped into even eerier territory with this 1932 story of betrayal and retribution in the circus. Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature's aberrations, who stick together like family--and who set out to avenge their little pal. Browning brought in some of the most famous sideshow attractions of the era, include Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny Eck the Legless Boy, as well as Zip and Pip, microcephalics whose appearance in this film inspired cartoonist Bill Griffith to create his comic strip, "Zippy the Pinhead." So disturbing that it was banned for 30 years in Great Britain. --Marshall Fine
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