Freaks (1932)

I have recently discovered I have access to Turner Classic Movie online, which has the added effect of making me watch many, many older movies as of late.  I was under the mistaken impression that the TCM channel was full of old movies with no discernment of quality, but I have found that actually there are something like 20 good movies on that channel at any given time.

It has opened me up to a wonderful list of movies that may have taken me years to get to, if at all.  One of these such movies was Freaks, the 1932 horror classic that was reportedly so scary that it was banned in the UK for over 30 years after its release.

That's a great tagline, but I did not find this movie scary.  It doesn't even really seem like it's supposed to be a horror movie.  It's an everyday slice of life film that turns into a revenge flick.  And I fucking loved it.

Yeah, if you're wondering why I'm taking the time to write about this specific movie instead of the other TCM movies, it's because I loved this movie.  I mean I loved this movie so much that it might legitimately be one of my favorite movies ever.

The "freaks" in question seem to refer to the carnival sideshow performers, who range from dwarf siblings, conjoined twins, a legless man, a limbless man, and microcephalic characters.  For the first half of this movie, the movie just chronicles their everyday lives, and shows how they're just as normal as you and me.

As far as the plot is concerned, it's minimal.  A woman in the sideshow named Cleopatra, who is "normal," wants to seduce one of the dwarves, marry him, and steal his money.  She schemes with Hercules, a strongman.  Cleopatra played by Russian actress Olga Baclanova, forgets she's not in silent movies anymore and plays her way over the top, but it works anyway, because she's more or less meant to be cartoonishly evil.

The movie benefits greatly from the fact that all the performers are really genetic anomalies.  They're the real deal.  We are really watching a limbless man light a cigarette with just his mouth.  We are really watching a man with no legs getting around with only his arms and hands.  No movie trickery.  

Browning was also the real deal.  Before he was a film director, he was in a traveling circus much like the one featured in the movie.  That comes through in the final product.  It feels like what it would be like to travel with sideshow performers during the Great Depression.

Speaking of, another added layer to this movie is when it was made.  Right in the heart of the Great Depression.  And right at the absolute height of the eugenics movement.  At least retrospectively, it is seen as a rejection of that movement, a celebration of people with differences.  Perhaps not quite as necessary today, but the normal, every day interactions of the "freaks" serves to normalize them to everyone else.

Which absolutely did not work at the time.  Freaks had a test screening in late 1931 that apparently made people literally run, and I mean run, out of the theater halfway through the movie.  The movie studio cut THIRTY minutes off the movie, and the version we see today is the reduced 64 minute version.  Wikipedia features an absolutely shocking review, which makes me think audiences at the time didn't like the movie for a very... unfortunate reason.

does not thrill and at the same time does not please, since it is impossible for the normal man or woman to sympathize with the aspiring midget. And only in such a case will the story appeal

What the fuck??  So yeah my suspicion is that people simply didn't want to look at the "freaks" and that's why it was not appreciated at its time and not for any other reason.  It was reevaluated during the 1960s by European audiences, being shown at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and that eventually spread its way to America.

I don't consider this a horror movie to be honest.  The ending is, to be fair, filmed like a horror movie.  The rest of the movie isn't at all.  But at that point, I'm full on rooting for these guys.  It's like me rooting for Django to kill slave owners.  Are they brutal?  Yes.  Do the villains of the piece deserve it?  Fuck yeah do.

This movie was banned in the UK for 30 years, and for anyone expecting a justification of that, it's literally just because they didn't want to look at people with disabilities.  That's it.  In the original cut of the movie, Hercules was castrated, so yeah I could see it there.  But it was cut and there is no such implication of that happening.

The one flaw of the movie is a flaw I completely forgive: the ending is very abrupt.  It's clear it was bungled by cutting thirty freaking minutes of the movie.  Even so, that hardly impacts the final product.  Freaks is a great movie and dare I say one of my favorite movies ever.

4/4 stars