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Freaks (1932): Wallace Ford, Leila Hyamsand and Olga Baclanova. Directed by Tod Browning, Screenplay by Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Charles MacArthur and Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the story “Spurs” by Clarence Aaron ‘Tod’ Robbins .

Widely-known as “the film that ruined Tod Browning’s career”, 1932’s “Freaks” was a bold experiment that had it’s heart in the right place. The story revolves around a troop of deformed circus performers - or “freaks” - who are manipulated by two “normal” members of the troupe. Browning’s intention was to portray the so-called monsters as human, while the two humans (the “normals”) are the real monsters. For the circus performer roles, Browning chose to cast real people with these deformities and birth defects. So unsettling was the result, the studio forced Browning to cut the film down to little over an hour. That removed material no longer exists and is considered lost, like a previous Browning film, “London After Midnight”.

Despite the disjointed nature of the excised film, it still holds up, not as a sideshow attraction, as most people who haven’t seen the film consider it to be, but an attempt at breaking through boundaries. It stands out from Browning’s other films of the era, like “Dracula” and “Mark of the Vampire”, which are more or less paint-by-numbers productions (above average paint-by-numbers productions that is). “Freaks” has a strange humanity at the heart of it that draws you in, siding with the ridiculed and tormented performers, aching for the revenge you hope they will take.

It’s at this point that the horror of the film takes off. You enter the film thinking you’re going to be horrified by the freaks, but end up siding with them as they creep through the night to do harm to the man and woman who have been manipulating and deriding them all along. It’s unfortunate that most of this sequence is what the studio cut because of it’s disturbing nature. Still, the fact that the film stands, despite of these cuts shows what an excellent piece of storytelling it is.

“Freaks” is another of the many fine titles that’s available for immediate download from archive.org, so, if you have an hour to spare, why not check it out now?

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