Starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams and Olga Baclanova
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Director Tod Browning made 62 movies in 24 years. Sadly, of all those films, he's only really remembered for two. The first, Dracula, we covered in our 1931 retrospective.
Freaks is the other and it is not just one of my favorite films of the period. It's one of my favorite films. Period.
The plot revolves around a circus side show. The "freaks" include Hans and Frieda, two midgets that are dating; Daisy and Violet, conjoined twins with one married to a circus clown; and The Human Torso, a limbless man who can light a cigarette without help. There are others, but you get the picture.
The main plot kicks into gear when Cleopatra, a human trapeze artist, learns that Hans is heir to a great fortune. From there, she plots with the show's strongman Hercules to woo and marry Hans, kill him and make off with the fortune.
There is so much to love about Freaks. There's always a risk of Browning exploiting the sideshow characters who were actual performers with a variety of maladies and abnormalities. The film never goes there. It treats the actors with respect.
The script smartly sets the action right in the middle of the world of the circus. There's no new performer who has to have everything explained. We are simply dropped into the lives of performers and expected to keep up.
A lot of the performers get subplots or moments. We get a terrific sense of what life is like in a world where performers have no legs, women have beards and two bickering sisters literally cannot get away from each other.
The film has long had a reputation as a "horror" film which a sentiment any fair reading would immediately dismiss. It's a melodrama set in a unique world. The horror elements, to the extent there here at all, exist solely in the last ten minutes of the film. And even then, I don't think it ever becomes terrifying or grotesque. Suspenseful? Definitely.
Freaks is about the easiest recommend in the world to me. I've loved this movie since I saw it years ago. Sadly, it was despised in its time and ultimately ended Browning's career. It's a real shame because all Freaks shows is just how ahead of his time he was.
***** out of *****
NOTE: The turning point in the film is a wedding feast with Cleopatra becoming inducted into the world of the side show performers. The "freaks" pass around a cup that they each drink from and chant "Gobble gobble - one of us - we accept her." If you've ever wondered where the Simpsons' writers got "one of us" from, look no further.
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