Freaks (1932)
Runtime: 66 mins
Synopsis: When released theatrically in 1932, FREAKS was met with near universal disgust by critics and audiences alike, lasting in theatres for only a short time in the states and banned in England. The film stars Harry Earles as Hans, a suave midget who belongs to the sideshow of a seedy circus and who... When released theatrically in 1932, FREAKS was met with near universal disgust by critics and audiences alike, lasting in theatres for only a short time in the states and banned in England. The film stars Harry Earles as Hans, a suave midget who belongs to the sideshow of a seedy circus and who makes the mistake of falling in love with the beautiful Cleopatra, one of the "normal" circus performers. Learning that Hans is about to inherit a fortune, Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans even though she abhors him, planning to steal his money and get rid of him. When the freaks of the circus, who keep a watchful eye on Cleopatra, discover her scheme, they plan to exact an unforgettable revenge. Far more unsettling than Browning's best known horror film, DRACULA, FREAKS has long been neglected due to its subject matter, even though it is a genuinely effective film. Gripping and often creepy, FREAKS manages to humanize its main performers, even looking at them with a sense of awe. By contrast, the "normal" performers in the film are largely hateful creatures who turn out to be much more repellant than their deformed colleagues. Both an excellent horror film and a unique look at the lives of sideshow performers, FREAKS is a chilling movie whose final ten minutes are some of the most harrowing in all of cinema. [More]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Starring: Wallace Ford, Olga Baclanova, Leila Hyams, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor
Screenwriter: Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Woolf, Al Boasberg
Producer: Tod Browning
DVD Info
Release:
Aug 10, 2004
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Full Frame - 1.37
Audio:
- Mono - English
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
To the horror movie, a genre he helped create, he brought a taste for Victorian melodrama and an understanding, which he must have gained in the circus, for the isolated lives of weird and deformed outsiders.
Freaks is one of Browning's more consistently fine films, a landmark still worth seeing.
If the heart of the horror movie is the annihilating Other, the Other has never appeared with more vividness, teasing sympathy, and terror than in this 1932 film by Tod Browning.
Absolutely spine chilling Tod Browning classic horror film. "We will make you one of us." Yike!
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer definitely has on its hands a picture that is out of the ordinary.
The movie's influences can be found in nearly every conceivable corner of modern film.
...drills into our hindbrain and jolts our atavistic response to the not-normal, then forces us to confront our prejudices and feel something -- revulsion, compassion, or surprise at the realization that those aren't mutually exclusive responses.
It's part of the film's brilliance that the lines between normal and abnormal, us and them, and even morality and immorality, are constantly blurred and reversed...
Ainda que Browning martele sem a menor sutileza sua mensagem ao longo de toda a projeção, o filme continua a impressionar graças ao seu elenco atípico e ao incômodo ato final.
...the movie was never meant to be a horror film; it was meant to be a character study and morality play.
It's a truly amazing film, not so much horrific as it is funny, touching and extraordinary; you'd be hard-pressed to find another film like it.
pretty pioneering for 1932, but modern desensitization to such things (hell, we have Paris Hilton on TV) mutes the freak-out effect almost completely
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by: superflysmith 12/6/07


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