Freaks

Rating:
Summary: Why do viewers freak out over this film?
Review: While this an interesting and highly original film, it is NOT the greastest movie ever made, as some of the other reviews here would lead you to believe. Not surprisingly, due to the lack of cinematic experience by much of the cast, most of the performances are amateurish and difficult to watch. The story also makes the fatal error of taking it's supremely sympathetic characters and turning them into extremely unsympathetic ones by the films end.
It is, however, a very disturbing film to watch, in an almost voyeuristic sense. Ultimately, it IS a must-see for real cinema buffs.
This particular DVD's picture quality is fair, but the audio is quite awful, which is of course not Tod Browning's fault, as the bulk of the rest of the films shortcomings are.

Rating:
Summary: One of Us!
Review: "Freaks" was directed by Tod Browning, who also directed "Dracula," and both of them are included on my Top 50 list. Of all the earlier movies that I have seen, this has to be the oddest, but it is brilliant in it's own way. Had this movie been made at this point in time, the freaks would have been all made with famous actors that have had computer's affecting the way they look, to make it look odd. The beauty of watching this version, which was made in 1932, was that all of the freaks were real. I don't use the term "freaks" to be mean, but I am trying to refer to the title of the movie. On the outside, these freaks are just people to make fun of, and you could laugh or be disturbed by their appearance, but they are people too, and this movie touches the emotions of them. This movie is not made great, but it is so odd, and so fun to watch that it's hard to hate it. The acting isn't so good, but it's not supposed to be. The sound could be a little shotty at time, but that grows over time. The point is, you should see this movie to experience this odd world. It's a world unlike anything we've ever seen, because this point in life you don't know what's real or not. This is the real thing. Harry Earles plays Tiny Hans, the "main character." He doesn't have a large credit list, but was in a few silent films, and his last movie was "The Wizard of Oz." If you have that, he's one of the lollipop guys, the one in blue. He's not a great actor, as this movie could prove, but he's such a likeable guy, that you have to feel sorry for him as you watch this.

Tiny Hans in one of the circus freaks. Him and Frieda, who is played by his real life sister, are in love, and Hans claims that he will never stop loving her. That is, until a grown women by the name of Cleopatra is sweet to him, but she just has her eyes set on his fortune. She has a man in her life, and he is a normal one, and his name is Hercules. Cleopatra "flirts" with Hans, and Hans flirts with Cleopatra, until they finally end up getting married. Hans is in love, but Cleopatra is greedy. After getting married, she plans on killing him, but after she and Hercules get drunk at the wedding party, they end up embarressing him. The other freaks learn what she plans to do, so they end up hatching a plan. This plan is so violent, and horrifying, that it's just so amazing to see this.

The most amazing thing about "Freaks" is the freaks themselves. The movie is kind to the freaks, and they never make fun of them. I like how they show all of these special talents that the freaks have. There is one freaks that doesn't have any arms or legs. When he walks, he has to crawl on his mid-section. There is one scene where he lights a cigarette, and it is amazing to watch. There is a man that has no legs, and he walks on his hands. The great thing is, is that he runs on his hands faster than all of the people that I know that run on their feet. There are two women that are stuck together, and when one of them kisses his boyfriend, the other one can feel it, and she smiles in pleasure. There was a women who ate with her foot, and a half women-half man. We get to see their special talents, and it is a message to the viewer that they are peopel too. The people that try to use their odd looks to hurt them. There is such a difference in all of these characters, that it's hard to understand the cruelness of man. "Freaks" is a horror movie, that was actually banned in many countries, and still in Sweden, until recently. It's so shocking because it's different. I'm sure at the time people saw this they feared these people. Half of the freaks just had odd shaped faces, and they are extremly different. This is one of my favorite movies, and I recommend you to see it just to see these talents that many people overlook just because they look a little different.

ENJOY!

Rated NR but I would actually rate it PG-13 for Strong Thematical Elements.

Rating:
Summary: Deserved of Academy recognition
Review: Blessed be.An early talkie directed by legendary silent film director Tod Browning. This film defies genre. It sure is unsightly. Hold on tight. It's about circus freaks. The cast is comprised primarily of real life Circus freaks. They are people too.In black and white, with grainy audio that may or may not be deliberate, we see a murder/ insurance fraud mystery develop. The victim is a freak; the killer is not.No money will help the freaks.Lawlessly, and in the mood for revenge, the killer is captured by the freaks. The hideous freaks do something hideous, and now have a new friend.

Rating:
Summary: You Will Never See Another Movie Quite Like Freaks
Review: Creepy. Disturbing. Difficult to sit through. Compelling. Thought provoking. Touching. Maybe even a little bit brilliant. Only a simpleton could watch this movie and come away completely unaffected. The freaks are a clan and they stick together and look out for each other and woe to the person who harms one of them. The freaks know that, for a normal person, the greatest punishment is to be made a freak. They use this to their advantage in a climax both compelling and frightening. Will stay with you for days.

Rating:
Summary: One of us...
Review: For it's time, this was a BOLD movie. There are hardly any special effects or a real sense of being a stereotypical "horror" movie, in terms of being classified as one. It was banned for a long time, but is now considered a classic, as it should be. There are hardly any special effects used in the movie, the sheer horror of it is within the story itself.

It's a story about a woman who mistreats a group of cirus "freaks" and then they decide to exact their revenge on her. Back in the day, people with physical disabilies were considered "freaks" based on everyone's ignorance and were dismissed. Some of them joined the circus to make a living and feel like a part of a group, so to speak, as represented here.

This is one of the most unnerving movies you'll ever see, and I strongly recommend it for horror buffs or anyone at all who's interested in film. A truely excellent movie.


Rating:
Summary: A Must See Movie
Review: Freaks will always be a unique film. The film is a mix of a fictional story brought to life with real life oddities. The story takes place with a traveling Circus. The Circus people are very much their own community. The "Freaks" of the circus stand out even from the other circus folk. They are still made fun of and lied to. Olga Baclanova plays Cleopatra, an evil trapeze artist. She takes advantage of a midget named Hans, stealing him away from his fiancé and taking his money. Unfortunately she did not consider the loyalty and capabilities of these abnormal people. She and her lover pay a great price for there ignorance. The "Freaks" of the circus eventually live happy and Cleopatra the fate of those she tormented. The Director Tod Browning has brought some the most famous sideshow attractions of that time, including Frances O'Connor (armless girl), Peter Robinson (human skeleton), Daisy and Violet Hilton (siamese twins), and Johnny Eck (boy with no legs), to name only a view. He brings this incredible cast of real-life sideshow freaks for this bizarre and fascinating film. The epilogue was clearly added to the film after its creation by its conflicting words. It made points that were later proven false by the story. It said that the oddities longed to become beautiful but this was never promoted in the film. The story was well based but not acted well, possibly due to the fact most of the cast where not professional film actors. The scenes were often over acted most of the time with more then enough enthusiasm from the characters. The visual scenes themselves where quite pleasing. The sets did a good job of bring out the conditions that the circus people lived in. There was also little make-up and special effects needed to show the audience how real these people are with their genuine flaws. Overall it is a movie that must be scene at least once. It brought to film the lives of the deformed and unwanted for the first time. It has a good point of not taking advantage of those that can not help who they are and the consequences you mite face.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage!
Review: In what many saw, and still see, as "handicapped," here we see a real community!

Rating:
Summary: Exploit or insight?
Review: Monday, September 13, 2004 / 4 of 5 / Exploit or insight?
A glamorous but evil hearted femme fatale targets the midget owner [?] of a small traveling circus and freak show. Intent on poisoning him to gain the inheritance, she crosses paths with the rest of the freaks and pays the ultimate price. This is the polarizing film, Freaks. Rarely making appearances on TV this release on DVD is most welcomed. Most of the ah, freaks indicated that it was not a great experience making this film, and indeed they had to deal with the same gawking and discrimination on the studio lot that they saw in their real lives. The plot is a simplistic love triangle cum revenge story where the trapeze starlet conspires with the strong man to bilk the midget out of his fortune. Despite their marriage, the rest of the freaks see through the façade and extract their justice. There are chilling moments in the final reel, especially the furtive glances and looks of hatred employed by the freaks once they find out the intentions of the `big' couple. Their chase of the antagonists in the mud and rain is classic, particularly effective in that it's often a slow crawl towards the camera, knives in hand. I was a bit torn by the film at once it is an effective story, but also is it right to be so morbidly curious about the human conditions that these people found themselves born into. If anything, perhaps the film forces a re-examination of our own viewpoints and humanity.


Rating:
Summary: In the distance, isolated from the rest of the carny
Review: The treacly sugary sweet sentimental background music is
gone! It's amazing what a good film "Freaks" is without it.
The music was so cloying that if you could eat it, it would
have given you diabetes. You can hear a sample on the
prologue added when the film was tossed onto the
exploitation market. Without this to distract, Tod
Browning's film is so oddly objective. Documentary like.
Quite modern actually. As is said on the DVD extra that
includes fascinating interviews, thoughtful insights, BIOS
of the actors and the reaction to and aftermath of the film,
we see it really without shock, reality knocked that away
long ago for most of us, but with an awareness of
ourselves--how do we interpret? Do we mentally turn
away? Do we admit to being uncomfortable? Do we see
beneath the deformities to the person themselves?

We see them as freaks, then, still and all? Is that it then?
What we see and how we manage to be selfish about it?
Putting us onto the composite THEM and thus making
ourselves feel noble and non-judgmental? In a splendid
book "Carnival" by Arthur Lewis, published in the early
seventies, he writes about a season he toured with several
carnivals, seeing what it was like. He writes that with
modern medicine, and safer childbirths, better diets,
prosthetics, corrective surgery, etc., freaks are becoming
an anomaly, and are a thing of the past, and as such are
becoming nostalgia, warmly tinted.

Sometime after this movie, we were becoming aware of
what causes deformities, of the burden born by people who
have them, and the saw dust aroma and hot sweaty tent
closeness and sickly cotton candy taste of watching them
was beginning gradually to sour. Yet, as some of the
historians on the documentary say, freaks is a word that is
honest. We do find discomfort in seeing people different
from us. Look at our country and many others right now in
the broader context.

No warmly tinted nostalgia here though. It is about a
grubby life. It is about camaraderie. It is about being
different in a world of ennui, when after a time, being
different has no meaning, and perhaps one wonders why
one is being looked at all. Beauty? Sameness? Oddity? Or
one just wishes one were looked at, please. Which world
do we live in at the moment? But it's also possible,
opposite from cruelty, we are still drawn to this film, or
still see the rare side shows, because we want to see over
the next horizon, to see something so alien to us, no matter
how profoundly or superficially, as the bearded lady in the
documentary says, that it causes conflicts in us. That we
somehow want to be that, at least for a time. Because it is
new and not us.

That, juxtaposed from this, we want to see beings from
another planet, we want to look before we began, or we
want to stand and look over the rim of death, to see what if
anything is there, without having to die to do it. Or to look
toward the sky and truly find the face of God. Beauty?
Hideousness? Always difference. Always needing that next
conquest. Perhaps. If the writer Carson McCullers found
herself from an early age entranced by freak shows, and if
many of us as children in our own territories were also
attracted to them, even those of us who only bravely stood
outside the tent, looking at the horrible images on the
canvass, then is it some impulse atavistic that can come
from a better place in ourselves, and say, these people just
may have the solution we are looking for. As one of the
commentators alludes.

I do put myself on them. I hope I do not condescend. I
fear I do. I see them as movie images of people long time
gone. And if one is drawn to this film, and all of the Lon
Chaney films, especially "The Unknown" and the whole
oeuvre of Browning-Chaney work, then it might not be
morbid curiosity at all, it might be a community we are
forming, for the heart and mind are restless things; we do
not become bored as easily as we desire to be unnerved,
frighteningly excited, and yet...would we care about these
characters at all without their deformities? Do we fool
ourselves? And how about in our own real world? Walk
past. Not stare. Feel good we were so "sensitive"?

We find our better selves reflected in Wallace Ford's
character. He is the clown with the nice smile and the
friendly face who seems to have been working with freaks
forever and treats them like--surprise--real people. Would
that then disappoint us, instead as we take off our egg
shells, and find ourselves real too?, that freakishness
involves inside also, and thoughts and ideas and loves and
hopes can be so classed, then we can at least stop being
condescending to ourselves. And even learn how to do that
with others. Just thoughts. A thoughtful film. A well made
film. Something to debate. Amazing how music and lack of
music, of all types and timbres, can change the
interpretation of things.

I sure wish someone would find that excised half hour though someday

Rating:
Summary: visionary, provocative, uneasy film of brilliance.
Review: This is a marvelous movie, but it has had a hard time really gaining true respect because it did what so few films really did - removed the safety net from viewers. In every horror film, the movie goers had that "net" of saying to themselves, no matter how horrific the film was, "this is only make-believe". One loses that in the provoking film by Tod Browning (who directed Lugosi in the original Dracula). This is really uncharted territory, (though Nightmare Alley with Tyron Power, 1947 walked into this realm very effectively), the lives of the Circus Freaks. By today's standard it's still having a hard time gaining respect in the politically correct consciousness where we would blanche at calling any human a freak.

Still, Browning's tale is haunting, mermerizing. It's a story of love, betrayal and the ultimate retribution acted out by the circus freaks themselves in an eye for an eye justice. Evil trapeze artist, Olga Baclanova deliberately sets out to seduce and marry a midget in the circus sideshow, with a wicked eye on getting his money. However, the perfectly gorgeous Olga has crossed the line with the tightly knit community of the very human and compassionate - just different - sideshow artists. These people use their "differences" to make a living in the world. They endure the harsh treatment and laughter at their expense, but they have a very supportive code amongst themselves. And for Olga to see the little man as an easy target and cause his death, it is beyond the pale to them. The sideshow people are a family, a clan, and when you do something to one of them, you do it to all of them.

Browning set out with a very provocative premise - frankly, I am still amazed after all these years the film was made - because Browning did not go for the more "acceptable" sideshow denizens, he went for the most famous of the era. It was a move that very nearly cost him his career. And that is where the viewer loses the safety net. This is real people displaying their sad and strange peculiarities. This film is disturbing on so many levels, holds up a mirror to the audiences faces, and possibly makes them face their own emotions with which we are not too comfortable. In Great Britain the film was banned for over 30 years.

The film is still potent, still brilliant, still holding up mirrors making us examine very uncomfortable prejudices and emotions. It's a masterpiece, everything Browning set out to make it realized. It's just moving, visionary, just often not an easy experience.