Freaks
is a 1932 United States horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs". Director Browning took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks," rather than using costumes and makeup.
Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance.
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FREAKS TICKETS
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Plot
The central story is of a self-serving
trapeze artist named Cleopatra (
Olga Baclanova) who seduces and eventually marries a
sideshow midget, Hans (
Harry Earles), after learning of his large inheritance. At their wedding reception, the other "freaks" resolve that they will accept Cleopatra in spite of her being a "normal" outsider, and hold an initiation ceremony, wherein they pass a massive
goblet of
wine around the table while chanting, "We accept her! We accept her! One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! One of us! One of us!" The ceremony frightens the drunken Cleopatra, who accidentally reveals that she has been having an affair with Hercules (
Henry Victor), the strong man; she mocks the freaks, tosses the wine in their faces and drives them away. Despite being humiliated, Hans remains with Cleopatra.
Shortly thereafter, Hans is taken ill (supposedly from having too much to drink at the wedding feast, but actually from poison that Cleopatra slipped him) and Cleopatra begins slipping
poison into Hans' medicine to kill him so that she can inherit his money and run away with Hercules. One of the circus performers overhears Cleopatra talking to Hercules about the murder plot, and tells the other freaks including Hans. In the film's climax, the freaks attack Cleopatra and Hercules with guns, knives, and various edged weapons, hideously mutilating them. Though Hercules is never seen again, the original ending of the film had the freaks
castrating him - the audience sees him later singing in falsetto. The film concludes with a revelation of Cleopatra's fate: her tongue cut out, one eye gouged and legs hacked off, she has been reduced to performing in a sideshow as the squawking "human chicken".
In an ending MGM threw in later for a "happier ending", Hans is living a millionaire life in a huge house when Venus and Phroso come with Freida and Freida comforts Hans when he begans to cry.
Spliced throughout the main narrative are a variety of "slice of life" segments detailing the lives of the
sideshow performers.
- The bearded woman, who loves the human skeleton, gives birth to their daughter.
- Violet, a conjoined twin whose sister Daisy is married to one of the circus clowns, herself becomes engaged to the owner of the circus. (Once, Daisy appears to react with romantic arousal when Violet is kissed by her suitor, implying that each sister can experience the other's physical sensations.)
- The Human Torso (Prince Randian), in the middle of a conversation, takes his own cigarette and lights it, using only his tongue. (In the original scene, he also rolls the cigarette, but the sequence does not appear in any commercial release.)
Cast
- Wallace Ford as Phroso
- Leila Hyams as Venus
- Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra
- Henry Victor as Hercules
- Harry Earles as Hans
- Daisy Earles as Frieda
- Johnny Eck as Half Boy
- Roscoe Ates as Roscoe
- Rose Dione as Madame Tetrallini
- Angelo Rossitto as Angeleno
- Edward Brophy as First Rollo Brother
- Matt McHugh as Second Rollo Brother
- Prince Randian as The Human Torso
- Frances O'Connor as Armless girl
- Peter Robinson as Human Skeleton
- Daisy and Violet Hilton as Siamese Twins
Production
MGM had purchased the rights to Robbins' short story
Spurs
in the 1920s at Browning's urging. In June 1932, MGM production supervisor
Irving Thalberg offered Browning the opportunity to direct
Arsène Lupin
with
John Barrymore. Browning declined, preferring to develop
Freaks
, a project he had started as early as 1927. Screenwriters
Willis Goldbeck and
Elliott Clawson were assigned to the project at Browning's request.
Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Woolf,
Al Boasberg and an uncredited
Charles MacArthur would also contribute to the script. The script was shaped over five months. Little of the original story was retained beyond the marriage between midget and an averagely sized person and the wedding feast.
Myrna Loy was initially slated to star as Cleopatra, with
Jean Harlow as Venus. Ultimately Thalberg decided not to cast any major stars in the picture.
Freaks
began filming in October 1931 and was completed in December. Following disastrous test screenings in January 1932 (one woman threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a
miscarriage), the studio cut the picture down from its original 90-minute running time to just over an hour. Much of the sequence of the freaks attacking Cleopatra as she lay under a tree was removed, as well as a gruesome sequence showing Hercules being castrated, a number of comedy sequences, and most of the film's original epilogue. A new prologue featuring a
carnival barker was added, as was the new epilogue featuring the reconciliation of the tiny lovers. This shortened version - now only 64 minutes long - had its premiere at the
Fox Criterion in
Los Angeles on February 20, 1932.
[1]
Reaction
Despite the extensive cuts, the film was still negatively received by audiences, and remained an object of extreme controversy.
[2] Today, the parts that were removed from it are considered
lost. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with
Lon Chaney and for directing
Bela Lugosi in
Dracula
(
1931) had trouble finding work afterward, and this in effect brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned in the
United Kingdom for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1960s,
Freaks
was rediscovered as a
counterculture cult film; throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the film was regularly shown at
midnight movie screenings at several movie theaters in the United States.
[3] In 1994,
Freaks
was selected for preservation in the
United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was ranked 15th on
Bravo TV's list of the
100 Scariest Movie Moments.
Among the characters featured as "freaks" were
Peter Robinson ("the human skeleton");
Olga Roderick ("the
bearded lady");
Frances O'Connor and Martha Morris ("
armless wonders"); and the
conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Among the
microcephalics who appear in the film (and are referred to as "pinheads") were Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow) and
Schlitzie, a male named Simon Metz who wore a dress mainly due to
incontinence. Also featured were the
intersexual Josephine Joseph, with her left/right divided gender;
Johnny Eck, the legless man; the completely limbless
Prince Randian (also known as The Human Torso, and mis-credited as "Rardion");
Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman; and
Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, who suffered from
Virchow-Seckel syndrome or bird-headed dwarfism, and is most remembered for the scene where she dances on the table).
Cult reaction
Owing to its cult status in the late-20th century,
Freaks
has been referenced explicitly in popular culture expressions from 1970s onward, from songs by other self-proclaimed "freaks", such as the
Ramones ("
Pinhead" "Gabba, gabba, we accept you, one of us."),
David Bowie ("
Diamond Dogs"), and
Devo ("
Jocko Homo"), to "cult" comic strips like
Zippy the Pinhead (a reference to the aforementioned microcephalic), and episodes of many TV series. The chant of "One of us!" is commonly used as a reference to the film.
References
- Offend One And You Offend Them All: The Making of Tod Browning's ''Freaks''
- Review
- The weirdo element