Freaks
All actors and roles (10)
All team (10)
Short description
Freaks is a drama with horror elements set in a travelling circus whose performers include people with a range of physical differences. The dwarf Hans is in love with the trapeze artist Cleopatra, though he is engaged to another little person, Frieda. Cleopatra is involved with the strongman Hercules and, when she learns that Hans has come into a large inheritance, she pretends to return his feelings and agrees to marry him. The other circus people, who have their own strong bond of loyalty, come to understand what she really intends and take their own form of revenge.
Tod Browning directed the film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working from a screenplay by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon, and produced it with Irving Thalberg. It followed Dracula in Browning's filmography and came after Iron Man, both released in 1931. Harry Earles plays Hans and Olga Baclanova plays Cleopatra, with Daisy Earles as Frieda, Henry Victor as Hercules, Wallace Ford as Phroso and Leila Hyams as Venus among a credited cast of 39. The film runs 64 minutes.
Audience response has been favourable over the long term: on IMDb it holds 7.8 out of 10 from around 55,000 votes, and on TMDB it also holds 7.8 from roughly 1,300 votes, a small but consistent verdict. A critics' rating of 8.7 from 59 reviews places it somewhat higher than those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- One of the roles in the original script was written specifically for the famous little person actor John George. However, for unknown reasons, John George did not appear in the film.
- The film featured the most impressive group of actors with physical disabilities in the entire history of cinema. Tod Browning invited most of the famous circus 'freaks' from all the traveling circuses in the United States to the casting.
- The film was banned from screening in a number of countries (specifically, in Great Britain and Australia) and American states and cities (some of these bans have not been officially lifted to this day and are formally considered still in effect).
- In 1994, the film was included in the National Film Registry of the United States as having significant artistic value.
- David Lynch’s film “The Elephant Man” (1980) was filmed under the direct influence of this picture.
- After the film was pulled from release, the rights to show it were acquired by the studio from a well-known impresario of traveling freak shows, Duane Esper, who screened the film under the titles "Forbidden Love" and "Errors of Nature" during his performances.
- In the United Kingdom, the film was banned from screening in 1932, and again in 1952. Eventually, the film was released in British cinemas with the most restrictive X rating in May 1963 – that is, 30 years after its release. This is one of the longest bans in the entire history of British cinema.
- When filming, Tod Browning was largely guided by his own life experience – at the age of 16, he ran away from home and worked for a long time in a traveling circus.
- In 1967, the film received a special exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- Prince Randian, born without arms and legs and also known as Rardion, the Torso, the Living Torso, the Pillow Man, and the Caterpillar Man, had a habit of hiding in dark corners during filming and frightening passersby with a chilling scream.
- The electrical equipment on the set was so poorly grounded that members of the crew were frequently shocked.
- According to legend, the studio was so frightened by the negative reaction of the public to the film that it destroyed the negative as a precaution.
- Harry and Daisy Earles play a loving couple in the film, but in reality, they are siblings, both little people.
- David Bowie’s song “Diamond Dogs” opens with a reference to this film: As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, You ask for the latest party, With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump, Dressed like a freak you was, Todd Browning’s freak you was.
- The head of MGM studio forbade actors with disfigurements from dining in the internal cafeteria, as they upset the sensitive actresses involved in other films.
- The famous bearded woman Olga Roderick later condemned the film and regretted her involvement in it.
- The film is based on the short story by Tod Robbins, "Spurs" (1923).
- The initial cut of the film was 90 minutes long, but after test screenings, it was reduced to 64 minutes. Among the cut and lost scenes, one known final episode features Hercules, castrated by freaks, singing soprano in a traveling circus.
- In 1961, the film was rediscovered and quickly gained cult status. It had a significant influence on nonconformist cultural currents of the 1960s—for example, on the classic modern photographer Diane Arbus.
- The film carried a humanist and moral charge of the highest intensity, but contemporaries were not ready for the level of frankness proposed by Browning. No censorship cuts could save 'Freaks' from box office failure, and the film was buried in the studio archive for three decades.
- Schlitzie (born Simon Metz), also known as Pinhead, always dressed and presented himself as a woman – and appears as such in this film, despite the fact that Schlitzie was biologically male. At the same time, Schlitzie was neither homosexual nor a transvestite and claimed to prefer wearing a dress simply for reasons of personal hygiene.
- Little person actor Angelo Rossitto (Angeleno) was subsequently able to continue a successful career in film and television, including roles as Baby Mo in the television series "Barretta" (1975-1977) and the Master in the film "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985).
- Several actors already cast in the film refused to participate in it, not wanting to appear alongside "grotesque freaks"—these were Victor McLaglen (Hercules), Myrna Loy (Cleopatra), and Jean Harlow (Venus).
- The 'chicken-man' special effect used in the film's finale was developed by the great Lon Chaney—a legendary actor, director, and master of special and makeup effects, who appeared in 11 films directed by Tod Browning.
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