Tod Browning’s “Freaks” may only have ever been made in that twilight period of the movies where sound pictures were still in their infancy and the Hays Production Code had not yet been established. And yet this cult, horror classic seems both ahead of its time and repulsively dated.
The film is a love story between a collection of sideshow performers in a circus, and “Freaks” is so strikingly notable because Browning, coming right from the traveling circus himself, successfully cast individuals with actual disabilities and deformities. There’s the two lovely Siamese twin girls, a half man/half woman, a man without legs, another with only a torso, a bird lady, an armless woman and the Pinheads, the latter of which are simply horribly deformed.
The central characters however are two dwarfs, Hans and Frieda (actual brother and sister Harry and Daisy Earles), who are engaged to be married until Hans develops a crush on the ravishing trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). She uses Hans for his money and laughs at him behind his back with her lover, the circus strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). The two try to poison Hans, and the circus freaks collectively get their vengeance by murdering and mutilating the two normals. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Freaks (1932)”