Freaks (1932)

 Freaks (1932) aka The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistakes

A movie of this vintage holds much too many distancing devices for contemporary audiences for them to get close to understanding the impact it had at the time of its original release. Based on the reaction which caused it to be banned we might get some intellectual understanding, but I doubt we can fully understand its visceral impact anymore.

Images and characters from the film have become celebrities in underground and ground level culture for some time now. Would it be surprising to see Schlitzie’s face on the label of some microbrew? I doubt it. Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead is a popular, surreal comic strip. I recall a book of medical freaks being advertised for sale on TV Guide back in the 70s, and even at that time, it was still a source of wonder.

But no longer.

I supposed it started, possibly, with TV Shows like Real People, That’s Incredible, Believe it or Not, Guiness Book of World Records and such that in only a few decades freaks invaded general culture, gained acceptance, and their imagery became quite prevalent.

They are no longer the forbidden, hidden side of humanity they once were.

And so it is that Todd Browning’s Freaks can no longer have the fascinating impact it once had.

The story itself is a sort of Noir, a woman feigns interest in a man, and she and her lover begin to milk him for his money.

When it’s revealed he is heir to a fortune she marries and attempts to poison him. After he and his clan are humiliated and as the murder plot is discovered unravels, they plan and execute a bloody revenge.

Does it matter much that the setting is an exotic Parisian carnival?

Does it matter much that the subjects, separate already from general society by being carnies have themselves a further line of demarcation?

The first group of them is physically normal (one of the clowns stutters), but the second group is comprised of various physical curiosities.

The main villains are not only ‘normal’ but are specimens of supposed male and female physical perfection (Cleopatra, the beautiful woman; Hercules, the strong man,) and their victims are missing limbs, or are Siamese twins, midgets, dwarves, a bearded lady, microcephalic ‘pinheads’, a human skeleton and a half-man, half-woman character whose freakish nature is more a trick than a physical deformity even when his/her psychology is not quite defined.

For the most part we are presented a melodrama with some efforts at comedy.

There are literal visual and verbal (yes, the line about “You should have caught me before my operation” is neither an accident not a serious line; I have heard it elsewhere,) and there is some clever photography which did a good job of distancing audiences of the time. Add to that early film making with some stilted line delivery, heavy accents, and many unintelligible lines.

The film only acquires a nightmarish, true Horror quality on the night of the freaks’ vengeance, were confronted with attempting to poison her husband she escapes and is chased in the rain between the carriage wheels and over the muddy terrain by freaks carrying knives in whichever manner is possible for them.

Even when we see the result (a special effect which must be painful to perform), which though horrifying is also darkly comedic, we miss the graphic violence that results in the horrible deformity.

Not only that, but scenes where Hercules is punished (by being castrated) were censored and edited out.

Audiences may consciously avoid visualizing it or thinking about it too much, but they may refer to the horrific conclusions of more contemporary works like A History of Violence (the original graphic novel version) or American Mary to realize how powerful an ending this was and is.

The freaks included Angelo Rossitto, Harry and Daisy Earles; Johnny Eck, who had sacral agenesis; the conjoined Daisy and Violet Hilton; Prince Randian and Schlitzie, a man with microcephaly. They not only perform some of their acts but are very human, sexy (the Siamese twin sisters discuss their love life, which surely must have shocked Pre-Code audiences and made them wonder about it,) and funny.

With Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, and Roscoe Ates.

A classic Cult Film.