Freaks (1932) Director: Tod Browning
“One of us, one of us, gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble…”
★★★☆☆
Fresh off the heels of Dracula (1931), Tod Browning’s Freaks is an oddball creature horror/B-film in the same vein as other early Browning films from the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it garnered several minor controversies for its grotesque depictions of sideshow carnies who brandish various unusual disabilities and afflictions. In fact, it was actually banned in the United Kingdom for several decades, only now becoming watchable everywhere. As such, Freaks is something of a cult movie. Needless to say, I had some fun with this quirky little oddity.
It tells the story of a trapeze artist who joins a traveling carnival group of “freaks” so that she can steal the money from a wealthy “midget.” As time passes (the film lasts slightly longer than 1 hour), he falls in love with the new member of the cohort (she is inducted in a creepy seance where the people sing “one of us, one of us, gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble…” repeatedly), however he soon realizes that she is only feigning love to take his money. So the “freaks” stage a scene in which she and her true boyfriend are attacked. In the end, we get a glimpse of her as a mangled creature – half human, and half chicken.
At any rate, the original screenings for Freaks were a disaster, with one pregnant woman apparently running out of the theatre claiming the film had caused her to miscarry. In an attempt at damage control, MGM ordered significant censorship of the film, and Freaks was promptly cut down to approximately 64 minutes in run-time, though it still received harsh criticism upon release. In my view Freaks is a short and fun, albeit slightly disturbing film about the dark underside of carnivals and sideshow acts. It is a justifiable Tod Browning cult classic.
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Credits:
- Directed by: Tod Browning
- Screenplay by: Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
- Based on: “Spurs,” a 1923 story by Tod Robbins
- Produced by: Tod Browning, Harry Rapf (uncredited), Irving Thalberg (uncredited)
- Starring:
- Wallace Ford…..Phroso
- Leila Hyams…..Venus
- Olga Baclanova…..Cleopatra
- Roscoe Ates…..Roscoe
- Harry Earles…..Hans
- Schlitzie…..Himself and Samuel Whiskers
- Cinematography: Merritt B. Gerstad
- Edited by: Basil Wrangell
- Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer