We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.
-Charles Bukowski
When trapeze artist Cleopatra learns that circus midget Hans has an inheritance, she marries the lovesick, diminutive performer, all the while planning to steal his fortune and run off with her lover, strong man Hercules. When Hans' friends and fellow performers discover what is going on, they band together and carry out a brutal revenge that leaves Hercules and Cleopatra knowing what it truly means to be a "freak."
This movie is based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs" from the 1920. Harry Earles, a dwarf who had appeared in Browning's The Unholy Three and who would ultimately star as Hans in Freaks—had originally proposed the idea of making a film version of "Spurs" to Browning. The studio agreed to hire Browning to direct the project based on his past success at Universal Pictures with Dracula and for his collaborations with Lon Chaney. this movie has so many interesting post/pre production tales i could ramble on all day, but lets talk about the actual movie first.
man we suck, just as human beings ya know? this movies immediately makes that clear in the way this movie treats its "freaks" on and off set. During the shoot, the film had already begun to draw disgusted reactions, resulting in MGM segregating the film's cast and crew to a separate cafeteria so that "people could get to eat in the commissary without throwing up". its a shame that the people who made this movie didn't realize the freaks are the heart of this movie. Every scene with a regular people is painfully dark and abusive, and the scenes with freaks are all wonderfully wholesome breathes of fresh air. the whole movie has a real nasty shade of ick, and that icky feeling only gets more intense as this movie enters the second act.
In January 1932, MGM held test screenings of the film which proved disastrous: Art director Merrill Pye recalled that "Halfway through the preview, a lot of people got up and ran out. They didn't walk out. They ran out." Others reportedly became ill, or fainted; one woman who attended the screening threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage. Due to the extremely unfavorable response, the studio cut the picture down from its original 90-minute running time to just over an hour. that footage is lost to time, and that only really becomes apparent in act 2.
The revenge of the freaks suffers the most from the cuts, and shortly after that powerful scene the movie is basically over. its a shame we don't get a chance to wallow in this movies effective horror, but this movie is so incredible the whole way through I'm not to bothered by it.
fuck this movie kicks ass.
10/10
Comments