- Elsa defies superstition to rehearse on Halloween, summoning the spirit of Edward Mordrake and his ghostly band of freaks.
- It's Halloween and those who work at the freak show have a day off. Ethel tells the the story of Edward Mordrake, a man with a second face on the back of his head. After escaping from an insane asylum he joined a freak show where, after a Halloween performance, he killed all of his fellow performers. Since then, it's been considered bad luck to have a show on Halloween. Jimmy and others bury their friend Meep. Bette continues to have a nightmare - which for Dot was a beautiful dream. Dandy wants to go trick or treating but isn't very happy with the costume his mother selected for him. He wants to be a clown, just like his friend. Maggie Esmerelda, a fortune teller, arrives looking for a job but something far more sinister is at work.—garykmcd
- A woman leads a tour at the American Morbidity Museum, talking about how they celebrate the differences of people as she walks among skeletons of Siamese twins and other deformities.
A "Dr. Sylvester Mansfield" (Denis O'Haire) and his comely assistant "Miss Rothschild" (Emma Roberts), ask the tour guide about the specimen they recently brought in. She returns with her appraiser, scoffing at their sample, and at his double degree from Harvard. The school has no record of him.
Mansfield sticks to his guns, saying he brought in an authentic baby Sasquatch. The appraiser says it's a fetal goat with the jaw of a cat sewn onto it. As they're trying to storm out in a huff, the guide pulls them aside to tell them if they brought her something authentic she wouldn't ask many questions. They ask where to find something like that and she mentions the freak shows in Coney island and South Florida. When she mentions the liver of conjoined twins fetches $5,000, they set their sights on Florida.
West Palm Beach, Florida, Halloween, 4 p.m.
Two mothers take their children trick or treating. A fairy princess sees the killer clown lurking nearby and runs to tell her mother, who brushes off her overactive imagination.
Meanwhile, Ethel goes to visit a doctor who tells her she has cirrhosis of the liver, even though she hasn't had a drink since Jimmy's 18th birthday. He gives her six months to a year and tells her not to have any alcohol at all. He's kind and empathetic and Ethel starts crying because he's the first doctor who's ever treated her with respect.
Back at the Freak Show, Jimmy is beating himself up over the death of Meep the Geek. Dot has finally had enough of the carousing and yells at everyone to stop and refocus their energy for the show. Ethel returns and, as she pours herself a stiff drink, explains to the Tattlers that freaks don't perform on Halloween because of Edward Mordrake, an aristocrat in the mid-1800s. He was a scholar, poet and musician -- who had another face on the back of his head who whispered evil things to him.
He tried to kill it, but he went crazy and his family committed him. Once night he escaped and ended up at the freak show.
He snapped one Halloween night and murdered every freak in the troupe. Then he hung himself. Legend has it that even in death, the demon head was still smiling. Any freak who performs on Halloween summons his spirit, so they don't perform.
Ethel says when she was in Barnam in 1932, they were forced to perform on Halloween and the next morning they found the Human Cannonball Hung, with a smile on his face.
As Ethel leaves, Jimmy tries to confront her drinking again. She's ugly to him and tells him with Dell there to protect them, Jimmy's free to run off like he wants.
At the Mott house, Gloria has pulled out all the Halloween stops to try to cheer up Dandy. She's even got their maid Dora dressed as Woody the Woodpecker because that's Dandy's favorite cartoon. When Dora presents him with the costume she spent months on, he's enraged to find it's Howdy Doody. He throws it on the ground and smashes a crystal candy bowl, screaming. Gloria races off into town to find a new costume before the curfew begins. Dora warns him she's not afraid of him.
Dandy goes to the sewing room and starts making his own costume.
Back at the show, Jimmy leads a graveside eulogy for Meep and the freaks pass a flask and toss chicken heads on his casket.
A cab pulls up, and the former Miss Rothschild introduces herself to Jimmy as Mystic Miss Esmerelda, a fortune teller looking for a job.
(Dream sequence) On an operating table, Bette sobs as Dot excitedly looks forward to a surgeon cutting Bette's head off so that she can finally be free of her and get married. Bette wakes her up, she was trapped in Dot's dream. Bette reminds her that Dot has already tried to kill her once before. Dot wants to save her money and find a doctor to do the surgery. "But one of us will die," Bette sobs.
"And one of us has a chance at happiness," Dot counters.
Jimmy brings Miss Esmerelda to see Elsa as she smokes opium in her tent. Elsa is skeptical. Miss Esmerelda looks around the tent for clues then sits at her crystal ball.
She says Elsa suffered a terrible injustice because of greed and jealousy. She mentions a woman named Marlena and Elsa says she stole her career. Esmerelda claims she hears another song in her future and there's thunderous applause for her. She sees an "elegant, refined stranger, with dark hair and piercing eyes. Under his guidance, he'll make you a star." Esmerelda throws in a faint at the end for good measure and Elsa hires her.
In their tent, Desiree Dupree comes onto her husband Dell, but he isn't able to rise to the occasion. She's frustrated and storms out.
Ethel sees Dell leaving in a huff awhile later. She's drunk and talky. She reminds Dell never to tell Jimmy he's his father, but then tells him she's dying and wants him to try to be a good influence for Jimmy.
Dell wonders what he missed from Jimmy's childhood. Jimmy wanted to be a soldier every Halloween.
Halloween Night
In the Mott house, Dandy comes downstairs in his handmade clown costume and picks up a knife from the silver. Dora is unfazed when she sees him wielding it. She warns that the next time he kills an animal, she'll calling the cops, but she doesn't think he has the guts to kill people. She dares him to kill her, staring him down, but he storms off instead.
Esmerelda calls Stanley to tell him she wants to leave because the freaks give her the heebie jeebies. But when he hears about Dot and Bette he starts planning the size of the jar to display them in. She says she didn't sign up for murder, but he reminds her that no one cares what happens to freaks.
A cop pulls up to Jimmy and Esmerelda at the phone booth, pointing out they have 10 minutes to make it back before the curfew. Jimmy chafes at a cop hassling them, but Esmerelda lays on the charm and the cop lets them ride off.
Back in his hotel room with his male escort date, Stanley shocks the young man with what's in his pants.
In West Palm Beach, the two housewives are back home with cocktails after trick or treating. The fairy princess young girl plays with dolls in her room when her older brother comes to mess with her. She's scared into silence when the killer clown sneaks up behind him.
The moms come running when they hear a scream. "The clown took him," the girl says.
Dot and Bette are ready to rehearse when Elsa comes in full costume, expecting a visit from a man who can revitalize her career. When Dot says they're the headliner now and should discuss her salary, Elsa threatens to take them to the swamp and leave them there. Amazon Amy and Phil the Seal think even rehearsing is threatening to summon Edward Mordrake but Elsa says it's a silly superstition.
Elsa performs Lana Del Rey's "Gods & Monsters" (sample lyric: "no one's gonna take my soul away...")
Out on the grounds, a green mist swirls and Edward Mordrake stalks among the tents. Elsa is excited when the dark stranger with dark hair and piercing eyes -- Mordrake -- comes in and watches her perform. She takes a deep bow, but he disappears.
Later that night, in her trailer Ethel starts to see ghosts of the dead around her. She sees Mordrake's green mist pouring in and then he appears and reveals the face on the back of his head. She protests that she didn't summon him, but he says it doesn't matter who called. He politely explains that he has to take her with him. He has a few questions first.
The face wants to know how she ended up in her "degraded state." She tells him about once having a great vaudeville act and falling for Dell, who convinced her to give up low comedy and go for refined culture. Audiences booed and walked out when she did Shakespeare abroad.
The face asks about her "darker shame."
When they returned home they couldn't find work so Dell arranged another kind of command performance. People paid to see a live freak birth. Then he charged people money to hold the "monster baby." Ethel cries over the fact that Jimmy has never known anything but exploitation.
Mordrake seems sympathetic and offers her a handkerchief. The ghosts of his past victims surround her and Ethel announces she's ready. But the face whispers "not the one" and everything disappears.
Dandy returns to the clown's cage of captives, luring the kids to the edge with candy before he tries to stab them. When the knife won't reach, he attaches it to a longer stick, but leaves when he hears the Clown coming with a new victim. "More fun," Dandy says.
To Be Continued....
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