Freaks

Rating:
Summary: A celluloid tribute to a vanished way of life....
Review: The circus sideshow was an American phenomenon for decades, satisfying the public's need to be scared, disgusted, and left in disbelief. Attractions were more and more preposterous, but many of the performers in "Freaks" were memories of sideshows past. Sideshows were one of the few options for the severly deformed, a chance to make money while developing "family" ties with other sideshow performers. Politically correct it was not, but it was an alternative to life in an instititution.

TLC did a two-hour program called "Sideshow" narrated by Jason Alexander that chronicles the history of sideshows in the United States. There is footage of "Freaks" that is discussed as well as interviews with many surviving sideshow attractions such as Jeanie the Half Girl.

"Freaks" was made by Dracula director Tod Browning on a seemingly low budget. The electrical equipment on the set was so badly grounded that crew members were frequently shocked. Here are several interesting trivia tidbits surrounding the film: the film's original ending showed Hercules singing soprano in Madame Tetralini's new sideshow, but due to intense test audience reactions this scene was cut. Randion, the man with no arms or legs, developed a habit of lurking in dark corners and frightening passers-by with a blood-curdling yell. And during filming, the director was plagued with dreams in which Johnny Eck and a pinhead would keep bringing a cow in backward through a doorway in the middle of shoots.

This film was so disturbing to the public that it was banned in Britain for thirty years. It went under alternate titles including "Forbidden Love," "The Monster Show," and "Nature's Mistakes." The "freaks" are still just as unsettling as they must have been to the sideshow and film public in 1932: a Half-Woman Half Man, a Half Boy, The Living Human Skeleton, The Bearded Lady, the Bird Girl, the Living Torso, the Armless Wonder, Pinheads, a Bird Girl and a Turtle Girl. Some are obviously mentally impared (pinheads and the bird girl)and their uninhibited bizzare performances are even scarier than the other acts.

"Freaks" still gives me the chills years after the first time I saw it. It is a testament to mankind's everlasting attraction to the bizarre, the scream-inducing, and the macabre. It is a remembrance of the once-booming sideshow business with its ragtag collection of "human oddities." And it's a pretty creepy horror film as well. I wouldn't recommend this to young children...it is not gory or violent but the images ARE disturbing even to me. But's it's a great Halloween film and an interesting piece of circus history captured for all to experience decades after its decline. Watch it in the dark....

Rating:
Summary: Remarkably conventional tale with unconventional actors.
Review: You might expect a movie like this to be an esoteric artsy and somber. But Freaks is much like any other movie with the goal of telling a mostly normal soap-opera-like story set in a circus environment. There are moments of lightness and drama. The film's most distinguishing characteristic is that the actors are circus freaks. Some of them are very strange to watch, many note the pinheads but the one that most fascinated me was an astoundingly agile boy with no legs. The story is about a beautiful trapeze artist who takes advantage of the affections of a wealthy circus midget and marries him as a ploy to inherit his wealth. The featured shocking conclusion is much more silly than jaw dropping but the rest of the film is pretty entertaining and fascinating to watch. Its story wouldn't stand up so well if normal actors were used but its subject matter makes it much more compelling. Its a very unique film and nothing has been made since that compares with it.

Rating:
Summary: Chant along with the circus freaks!
Review: This is a "must see" for anyone who's never viewed it before. A weird lesson in tolerance via Tod Browning with a cast of true "freaks" (no make-up needed!) giving the class. Gabba-Goo-Gabba-Goo!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: freaks
Review: we didn't lie to you folks. we told you we had living breathing monstrosities. you laughed at them, shuddered at them, and yet - but for the accident of birth...you might be as they are... their law is a code unto itself - offend one... and you offend them all...

Rating:
Summary: Banned in Boston, "Freaks" is Tod Browning's best film
Review: For years I had heard about the legendary Tod Browning film "Freaks" that so upset audiences it was banned in Boston and Great Britain. I had read the short story "Spurs" on which it was based and when the film was finally screened on campus I talked my roommate into going with me. Most of the people sitting around us knew nothing about the film and when I told them about it everybody started to get nervous. Then the film began...and we all loved it! My roommate and I both had crushes on Daisy Earles who plays Frieda in the film, opposite her husband Harry as Hans. The story is quite simple: Hans and Frieda are a pair of midgets in love, but Hans thinks that Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) the bareback rider is beautiful. Cleopatra plays with Hans' affections until she learns he has money. Over the objections of her boyfriend, Hercules (Henry Victor) the freak show strongman, she accepts Hans' proposal. During the wedding feast when the freaks accept her into their ranks, she makes it clear how much she despises them all. But when Hans starts to become ill because of the poison she is feeding him, the freaks decide it is time to take matters into their own hands. The film's climax, when the freaks chase Cleopatra and Hercules during a rainstorm, is truly chilling, although Cleopatra's final fate is as unreal as it is ironic.

All Browning really did to terrify audience was to include real freaks in his film, such as Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese Twins, Schlitze the Pinhead Girl, Josephine Joseph the Half-Woman/Half-Man, Johnny Eck the Half Boy, Frances O'Connor the Turtle Girl, Peter Robinson the Living Human Skeleton, Olga Roderick the Bearded Lady, Koo Koo the Bird Girl, Martha Morris the Armless Wonder, and Randion the Living Torso (who rolls his own cigarettes despite having neither arms nor legs). However, the film clearly portrays the "freaks" with dignity. As Madame Tetrallini (Rose Dione) tells someone, "These are all God's children." The true monsters in this film are the "normal" human beings, who receive their just desserts (supposedly a scene in which Hercules is castrated was cut from the film). This is Browning's best film, not "Dracula." It is not even close. You might screen this film for the first time because of its reputation, but you will watch it again because it is a good film.

Rating:
Summary: Visit a hidden world -- A circus "side show"
Review: "Freaks" is so shockingly grotesque that the 1932 film was shelved for some 30 years until its genious was discovered by critics and film lovers. -- Many of the characters are actual circus side-show performers. The story centers around a young dwarf couple (Hans and Gretchen) whose happiness is disturbed when a beautiful "normal" memeber of the troupe sets her eyes on Hans' fortune. She schemes to steal him away from Gretchen, then do away with him to keep the money for herself. When the plan is discovered, the "freaks" deal with the situation in their own way (not revealed until the final scene!) -- This film is a powerful commentary on our society. The countless "outcasts" who seem invisible in the light of our lives of plenty need not be in the isolation our society forces them into. In 1932 audiences were not ready for such a message. Today (and for some time) "Freaks" has gained cult status. This is a very unusual film, nonetheless a classic! Recommended to film enthusiasts!

Rating:
Summary: A film that should be remade with Rob Zombie at the helm
Review: I read a lot of reviews before finally renting Freaks. I was definitely expecting to be shocked and waiting for a phenomenal climax, neither happened. Maybe its because the movie was only 66 minutes long or maybe it was just the time period it was made in, but really it was because I have been so desensitized to violence. I did enjoy Freaks, but the characters neither scared or scarred me. The freaks in this film did an admirable job acting, especially since they were not actors. The only scene that really tripped me out was in the beginning when all of the freaks were dancing in a circle out in the forest. Call me warped but this movie is just calling out to be remade and lengthened. I am not in favor of exploiting these people but I feel that this film portrays a very human side to these people that most never get a glimpse of. I found Freaks classified under Horror in the video store and I'm still not convinced that this was the proper category, but really what is? This is definitely worth a watch, real short but groundbreaking for its time.

Rating:
Summary: Above average film, still slightly exploitative
Review: "Freaks" is still unsettling after 65 years, and as long as that continues to be the case, there's very little to complain about.

Nevertheless, it's strange that people still claim that this movie refuses to exploit freaks, and, in fact, sympathizes with them. Now, I personally don't care what Browning's intentions were. It would make me nervous, however, if people today claimed that "Birth of a Nation" was completely pro-black; D.W. Griffith has a right to express his beliefs and opinions, but when the audience completely misconstrues those opinions, there may be something worry about.

I've read articles that claim that this movie was a big step for "freaks." After all, we see them smoking cigarettes, falling in love, doing "normal" things. These articles would have us believe that we take these little moments in the film for granted, but to the 1930s audience, this was revolutionary. Freaks smoking?! I thought I'd seen everything...

I think those articles sell that audience a little short. It may have been the 1930s when there was no obligation to be nice to minorities, but people back then were human beings, capable of such emotions as sympathy and empathy, and certainly imbued with enough reasoning ability to understand that deformed people were human and capable of smoking cigarettes. White people lynched black people back in those days, but they probably had the mental facilities to not panic when they learned that some black people smoked, just like the normals.

Not to mention that "freaks" aren't exactly respected or accepted by the general public today, even if we've changed their name to "differently abled," or something even more condescending.

At the end of the movie (spoiler ahead), the "evil" pretty girl (the only way to make the freaks appear "good" is to make the normals evil, of course) is disfigured (by the freaks), and becomes (supposedly) the most hideous freak of all (leaving everyone screaming in horror), which, according to the movie, is the best revenge and worst punishment of all. In other words, being a freak is worse than death.

I don't feel that Browning was anti-freak the way Griffith was racist, and in fact, I do think that he was trying to make a movie that showed freaks in a more positive light. In the end, though, just as there are several movies today that tell us how EXTRA-special black people or women are, "Freaks" is ultimately condescending. That's fine, but it surprises me that more people don't think so.

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I have grown up watching this movie, I remember I made every one of my friends watch this movie almost every time I had a sleepover. This movie is classic. It's funny, and it has an original plot, which is very hard to come by now-a-days. I always have trouble in the beginning of the movie, because between the less than adequate audio machinery (it is a pretty old movie) and the heavy french accents, it is hard to understand what they are saying. But don't be discouraged, your ears quickly adjust.

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinarily compassionate film for its time or anytime
Review: This movie is such an excellent one, I used it in a disability training with my staff.

I manage a department in which people work with troubled youth. Recently, we started receiving admission requests from youth who are considered "disabled." I arranged a training entitled "Our views on disabilities". This movie was a great way to open. It portrays disabled people as people, regardless of what we may consider extreme limitations (one man has no arms or legs). We get to see the characters' personalities, fears, passions and frustrations. These character portrayals were a refreshing change from the many movies, then and now, that make fun of disabilities from stuttering to quadraplesia.

There are scenes that are very hard to watch, especially in a world where any imperfection can result in rejection, mockery and repulsion. It's sometimes hard to see the characters as people because they are not what many of us consider "normal." But that is just the point. What makes me "normal?" Perhaps it is the fact that no one readily sees my flaws because they are there.

I am not trying to underscore or make light of the obvious limitations of the characters or take away the legitimate empathy one might have with their struggles. However, the larger question of what "disability" means in terms of being human and worthy of love and respect is what the movie tries very successfully to address. I was moved to question my own thoughts on the matter.

A must see.