Freaks [DVD] [1932] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The story is quite simple: Hans and Frieda are a pair of midgets in love, but Hans thinks that Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) the bareback rider is beautiful. Cleopatra plays with Hans' affections until she learns he has money. Over the objections of her boyfriend, Hercules (Henry Victor) the freak show strongman, she accepts Hans' proposal. During the wedding feast when the freaks accept her into their ranks, she makes it clear how much she despises them all. But when Hans starts to become ill because of the poison she is feeding him, the freaks decide it is time to take matters into their own hands. The film's climax, when the freaks chase Cleopatra and Hercules during a rainstorm, is truly chilling, although Cleopatra's final fate is as unreal as it is ironic (and was supposed to be even worse: but the scene of Hercules singing soprano in Madame Tetralini's new sideshow--think about it--was too intense for early audiences and was cut).

All Browning really did to terrify audience was to include real freaks in his film, such as Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese Twins, Schlitze the Pinhead Girl, Josephine Joseph the Half-Woman/Half-Man, Johnny Eck the Half Boy, Frances O'Connor the Turtle Girl, Peter Robinson the Living Human Skeleton, Olga Roderick the Bearded Lady, Koo Koo the Bird Girl, Martha Morris the Armless Wonder, and Randion the Living Torso, who rolls his own cigarettes despite having neither arms nor legs. The original short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins had a midget falling for a bareback rider who marries him for his money and at their wedding feast puts her husband on her shoulders and boasts that she will carry him across France. With the aid of his large, angry dog he forces her to do just that. Browning's film expands the scope of the story into something more complex and much more satisfying.

However, the film clearly portrays the "Freaks" with dignity. As Madame Tetrallini (Rose Dione) tells someone, "These are all God's children." The true monsters in this film are the "normal" human beings, who receive their just desserts. But when "Freaks" was relased it was banned in the United Kingdom for thirty years (and is still banned in Sweden). During that period Browning was blackballed in Hollywood. He had promised MGM the ultimate scary movie and given the reaction you have to conclude that he delivered. The film was originally intended to have what we would now consider an A-List cast with Victor McLaglen as Hercules, Myrna Loy as Cleopatra, and Jean Harlow as Venus. However, all of the stars reportedly balked at the prospect being in a film with "sideshow exhibitions."

This 1932 film is clearly Browning's best film, vastly superior to the more famous "Dracula," which, after all, was basically a filmed stage play for the most part. It is not even close. You might screen this film for the first time because of its reputation, but you will watch it again because it is a pretty good film, especially given the time at which it was made.

This is a film that cannot fail to have an impact on you when you first see it. Yes it is ancient by today's standards, it creaks and crackles all over the place, and some of the acting (most particularly it must be said on the part of Hans and Frieda the circus midgets) would make ironing-boards look Oscar-winning! But it's a film that has true historical value. The "freaks" of the title aren't actors undergoing hours of transformation in the make-up department (such as John Hurt in "The Elephant Man"), but are the real McCoy, hired from the same travelling circuses and peepshows that Browning himself had known as a child, and which, by the 1930s, were nearing the end of their shelf-life as small-town entertainment.

As other revierwers on these pages have pointed out, the film seems to be at war with itself as to what its ultimate aim is. Its portrayel of the performers' fiercely tight-knit little community is done with great sympathy and respect. And yet, and yet, Browning couldn't afford to lose sight of the fact that he was supposed to be making a horror film, not a social documentary. So a lurid plot was added. When the performers learn that Hans is being betrayed by his villainous bride, the statuesque trapeze artist, Cleopatra, who is plotting to kill him to get her hands on his legacy, they enact a revenge that is truly appalling. The build-up to this is very good indeed, with rain lashing down on a dark and stormy night, flick-knives being sharpened, a moody harmonica playing, and the circus wagons rumbling through the forest. It comes second only to the notorious wedding feast scene for being the most effective part of the whole film. Their chant of "one of us one of us we will make her one of us" turns out to be only too true!

This is worth seeing as a very quirky and offbeat slice of cinema history, but it leaves me wanting to know what happened in real life to everyone who took part in it. How did they end up? Did they spend the rest of their lives in these macabre entertainments? Did the film make any difference to them at all? Perhaps somebody sometime could do a documentary about them. Or perhaps a film in its own right?