Freaks

Rating:
Summary: A must see for human interest buffs
Review: This is a very powerful film.The acting is a little over dramatic by some of the "normal" actors,however leila hyams is at her best.The title does'nt do this film any justice.Do yourself a favor and check this one out.

Rating:
Summary: Good flick.....weird man
Review: Whoa! That's all you can say after watching this weird, yet hypnotizing flick. Freak after freak are paraded in front of the camera as a tale of love and greed unfolds. I'm sure back in the day, the ending shocked everyone, but by today's standards it was nothing spectacular. It's the freaks themselves that shock the viewer. The pinheads are very disturbing. Watch as a man with no legs and no arms rolls his own cigarette.

Basiclly the plot is this. A beautiful (and I mean HOT!) blonde trapeze artist fools a midget into marrying her. All along she has a lover and the two of them are only interested in the midgets fortune and want to kill him. Well the freaks find out and avenge their friend without mercy. The beautiful woman is transformed into a friggin' retarded, legless, chicken! This movie will leave you feeling that you just came down off drugs. Pretty powerful for an early thirties flick. But considering it came from the same guy that directed Frankenstein, it's not that surprising.

Rating:
Summary: genuine classic
Review: They say people ran screaming out of the theatres when this movie was first shown back in the 30s. What they don't tell you is that this is not a horror movie. This movie is actually intended to show real freaks in real life; the story plot is probably the most unrealistic part of the movie, even though it's standard soap opera and you might even watch this same plot on TV today.

What makes this movie interesting isn't the plot, it's the actors, or I should say the people acting out the story. Because most of them aren't really acting. The leading villainess is probably an actor, I don't know. And there are probably a few other real actors here. But most of the "actors" are real freaks: the pinheads, the midgets, the siamese twins, the human torso. The pinheads don't need to act out their confusion and inarticulation; it's real. The midgets don't have to act out their social isolation. The siamese twins don't have to act out their physical and mental fusion. And the human torso doesn't have to practice lighting a cigarette with no arms and no legs to make it look real.

Because these "actors" are real freaks. And, more importantly, they are real human beings. Which is why the title "Freaks" is so ironic; this is a movie about human beings who also happen to be freaks.

Seventy years ago, people ran away screaming because they didn't want to believe it was real, and this movie was banned for a long time. Today, I'd like to think that people watching this movie have more understanding about the real message in this movie, that a human freak is not just a freak, but a human being also.

This is not a horror movie. And it's not an exploitation movie. It's in a category all by itself. It will fascinate you and repell you, and hopefully make you think.

Rating:
Summary: A Thing of Beauty
Review: Once a banned and controversial movie, now a cult classic, "Freaks" is misleadingly categorized as a "horror" film. As a result, the average horror consumer is apt to be disappointed that watching the film today is anything but a scary experience. On the other hand, the sensitive viewer is apt to discover that recognizing one's own commonality with "freaks" is far more rewarding than being repulsed or shocked by one's difference from them.

Browning's film remains cutting edge because, unlike the carnival freak shows of the past or the Maury Povich-Sally Jesse Raphael television shows of the politically correct present, it makes no concessions to its subjects' abnormalities and deformities. With the exception of the didactic, preachy written preface that the studio felt compelled to attach to later releases of the film, the camera represents freaks as ordinary human beings, not as unusual specimens.

In fact, the narrative frame of the film lets the viewer in on the the film's "real" freak show--the once-beautiful trapeze artist who becomes deformed in proportion to her unwillingness to recognize the humanity she shares with freaks. Browning's film asks us both to see freaks as human beings like ourselves and, even more importantly, to look to our own deformities. The idea is not to take comfort in our difference from freaks but to ponder our similarity with them. Any time we use someone else's bad fortune as a measure against which to compare our own good fortune, we blaspheme God's creation and deform our own souls.

Finally, it's easy to understand how Browning's film became a favorite with midnight movie audiences in the sixties and seventies. Certainly the countercultural crowd drawn to such "alternative" films must have sensed more than a little kinship with the freaks on the screen. And if that weren't enough, it is the communal bonding and determined spirit of the freaks themselves, not the intervention of "establishment" social-moral forces, that prevails and triumphs in the end.

Rating:
Summary: disturbing... and poignant
Review: I first pulled it off the shelf when I worked at a video store when I was 16. After I viewed this film, it stayed with me ever more. The prejudice issues brought up in a time where people were supposed to remain silent, assured its consequent banning after its release. But the true meaning aside from the horror, was that the 'freaks' had their own code. Bannished from society by their differences, they formed their own society, complete with punishment for the offenders.
I still think that the scene at the table were she stands up in total disgust and screams "FREAKS!" is one of the best movie moments ever recorded.

Rating:
Summary: great cult film
Review: I watched Freaks for the first time about 15 years ago. While not well written or acted it portrays a true account of circus sideshow performers and asks you to look past their physical deformities and realize they have normal feelings. (If you have seen the animated film Toy Story then you have seen a remake of the revenge scene in Freaks.) I've had mixed reactions from friends that have seen this film but more favorable than not.

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Summary: freaks, thoughts on the movie
Review: I was astounded yet thankful that such a group of people struggling together to survive had the courage to create this movie.Having individually been the social scurge and outcast, they find a common place and then turn it around so the very people who forsook them now has to pay to see them. I applaud the cast and all others who assisted in the production of this film. Their simple humility could not be hidden. Their dignity was plainly shown for all to see. The purity of their spirit is anything but freakish yet the one they turned into a freak was given a body that matched her freakish spirit. It makes one think, "Who really are the the freaks in this world?" I hope they laughed their way to the bank for a job well done...the joke is on us, "the normals?" I do so applaud them all.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Thoughts About A Disturbing Film
Review: In one sense, FREAKS is not a greatly well-make film. The plot is little more than soap-opera, the script is weak, the performances are merely adequate, and the cinematography and sound are occasionally a bit less than adequate. Even so, it is a very memorable film. The thing which makes the film memorable? Why, the "Freaks," of course.

Some of these so-called "freaks," such as the famous Hilton sisters, were actually popular stage performers; others were from circuses, carnvials, and sideshows. Among the latter we find several performers who are very obviously mentally impaired. Their presence gives the film a certain aura of explotation that will likely make a modern viewer feel more than a little uncomfortable. The viewer's discomfort is further increased because, with the exception of a very few (again, the Hilton sisters come to mind), these performers do not actually perform at all. They simply exist, and director Browning uses them much as one would use a set device or a special effect. The the result can be profoundly disturbing indeed, particularly in the film's climax, when we watch the "Freaks" flop, slither, and crawl through the mud in a driving rain--and more disturbing still when one of the most obviously mentally impaired cheerfully picks up a knife with which to attack their victim.

I generally tell people they should see the film at least once. After that--it rather depends on how you feel about it, whether or not you think the director is justified in the display. And that is no "modern" issue--it was the issue then as well. For myself, I have seen the film at least three times: once at a film festival; once, when it was rented by a friend who wished to see it; and once when it just happened to be the only going on cable tv at 2 in the morning. And my own feelings about it? I don't know. I bet you won't either. And that, really, is why FREAKS remains such a disturbing film even to this day.

Rating:
Summary: Too many comtemporary critics missed the irony.
Review: Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)

While Tod Browning directed sixty-two films, from the early days of silent movies until the beginning of World War II, the vast majority of filmgoers (even of the snob variety) remember Browning solely for Freaks, his groundbreaking 1932 picture about carnival life. (Browning also directed Lugosi's Dracula and Chaney in a number of films, but the stars tended to eclipse the director in those cases.)

The plot of the film is one of the mothers of all urban legends: a "normal" woman, Cleopatra the trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova) romances a sideshow performer, Hans the midget (Harry Earles) away from his fiancee, fellow midget Freida (Harry's real-life wife, Daisy), in order to get his inheritance so she and her real love, Hercules (Henry Victor) can run off and live like king and queen. This, needless to say, disquiets the sideshow pooulace, who get revenge on Cleopatra in a rather unique way. The plot is also, as should be obvious, quite thin and silly. The acting, in many cases, is atrocious, aside from a few Hollywood veterans, notably Henry Victor and Roscoe Ates, both of whom were quite well-known in their day (Victor was the lead in the 1916 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray; Ates was a character actor with a resume that encompassed such films as Gone with the Wind, The Champ, King Kong, and the 1933 live-action version of Alice in Wonderland). In other words, if you're looking for your basic Hollywood blockbuster, you're going to be disappointed.

What makes Freaks (based on Clarence Robbins' novel _Spurs_) a classic is that Browning cast actual sideshow performers in many roles, and then handed them a script that treated them as human beings rather than freaks; the beauty of the movie's title is in its irony (something missed by many over the years who would have had the film banned). Browning's movie should have ushered in a new era of tolerance and recognition that so-called accidents of birth are human, too; unfortunately, more recent exploitation flicks like _Freaks Uncensored!_ (1999) and the ever-popular Mondo Cane series (made between 1962 and 1988) provide pretty solid evidence that such is not the case. (It is another sad irony that the cast list for Freaks Uncensored! contains many of the same names as does Browning's film.) Still, Browning is certainly to be commended for trying, at least, and his amusing little peccadillo is certainly worth going out of your way to watch a time or two. **** 1/2

Rating:
Summary: Make em' vomit!
Review: Back in 1932 when this film was released it not only incurred the wrath of irate studio heads who found it tasteless and disgusting, it caused--no kidding!--crowds of sickened audiences to rush out of theaters screaming, crying, and . . .yes, vomiting. Even though us modern moviegoers are now used to much gore and violence, this film still retains its power to disturb almost seventy years later with its brutal and dark look at human nature seen through the life of a traveling circus. You can immediately tell from the start that the end's gonna be bad when a dapper but gullibly lovestruck midget falls for a scheming sexpot of a trapeze artist. Naturally there's no genuine chance for him but in his deluded lovesick state he believes she returns his affections when in reality she's only after his money--even after the warnings from the other freaks and in particular a fellow female midget who loves him. Inevitably he gets hurt terribly when he finds out his ladylove's true motives, but that's okay since in the end she gets the comeuppance she deserves at the hands of the midget's avenging freak friends when she is transformed into one of the oddities she derided and so despised. I suppose this film was so disturbing at the time not only for the numerous and truly astonishing freaks showcased, but because people found it unsettling that they would be capable of "normal" human emotions such as love, tenderness, devotion, and vengeance. An excellent horror/morality parable that's electrifying and crackles with raw intensity dealing with sexuality and vengeance even to this day.