Day Three: Freaks

Horror definitely was defined much differently back in the 1930s. Joey and I just finished up the 62-minute long Freaks. I shouldn't be so tough on it: Tod Browning (director of the acclaimed Dracula starring Bela Lugosi) was forced to cut out almost 30 minutes of his original film to make it "appropriate" for audiences. At an early screening, one woman even claimed to have had a miscarriage due to the disturbing images. But honestly, even though the ending is pretty creepy (and would have been scary if they had left the original footage in), this story is really just heart-wrenching.

Freaks takes place in a circus. Cleopatra is the beautiful trapeze artists, but we soon find out that she's a huge bitch. She's using Hans (a dwarf) for his money, while cheating on him with the strong man, Hercules. Hans swoons and dumps his fiance and fellow dwarf, Frieda. The rest of the "big people" laugh at Hans, but he marries Cleopatra anyways. She and Hercules make a fool of Hans at the wedding reception: after the rest of the "freaks" start chanting in a ceremony to accept Cleo as one of them, she throws her drink them and tells them all to leave. Obviously, she does not want to be one of them. Naturally, they take revenge. I won't give away the ending, but lets just say they succeed in making her "one of them."

The DVD includes a prologue, telling the audience about how side show freaks, deformed people, have struggled for centuries. Browning obviously has a soft spot for these people, and used real circus performers for his cast. As the story goes, Browning at one point worked in the circus as a boy and made friends with many side show freaks. While I'll never get to see the deleted footage, I've read that much of it was just depicting the "freaks" as normal people, going about their daily lives. Truly terrifying to the normal looking masses of 1932, apparently.

It also includes an epilogue that I'm not too fond of. As the DVD bonus feature "Additional Endings" points out, the ending was originally much more vicious and scary (though nothing compared to our modern day blood and gore: think more in the style of a tame version of The Birds, without any actual physical harm on camera). Audiences were terrified, states required footage to be removed before they would allow screenings. In an effort to make Hans seem less vengeful, we see a scene where Frieda consoles him, that it wasn't his fault, what the others did to Cleo. This ending is lame. I recommend watching the alternate endings bonus feature to find out more about the lost footage (they don't have it anymore, but the commentator talks more about what it was). There is also a lot of cool trivia on IMDB.

It's really fascinating/terrible that the movie seems to have been billed as a film about a normal woman stooping to a midget's level and how she's punished for it. Like Cleo and Hercules were just trying to get by and these awful people did this to them. Um WRONG they are giant douchebags FROM THE START. Anyways, I obviously teared up a bit when Frieda gets her heart broken.

This is a very cool movie and, as with all movies that date this far back, an interesting look at cinema of the time. We thoroughly enjoyed it. My favorite scene: when Prince Randian, "The Human Torso" (a man with no arms or legs), lights his own cigarette. Truly badass.




Seriously... he's shaving!!! This man is awesome.