A forest glade somewhere in Europe. A warm, sunny day with children playing on the grass. But the camera moves closer and reveals that something is terribly wrong. For these are not children, but tragically misshapen human beings. Pinheads. Dwarfs. A young man with only half a body. A man without arms or legs. These are the Freaks.
In 1932, director Tod Browning, fresh from his success with DRACULA, was instructed by Irving Thalberg to top FRANKENSTEIN. He succeeded. The resulting film was considered so ghastly that it was banned in Britain for 30 years. It is the strangest film MGM ever released.
Browning wanted to tell a tale of love, greed & revenge set in a circus, most particularly in the sideshow of human anomalies. He scoured Europe & America for the perfect cast. He got them: Violet & Daisy Hilton, the celebrated Siamese twins; dwarf brother & sister Harry & Daisy Earles; Johnny Eck the Half Boy (a good actor, he will remain in your mind a long time); the tragic Josephine Joseph, a hermaphrodite; as well as a human skeleton, armless girls and the female pinheads, among others.
While the plot is exploitive & the title tasteless, these people show us glimpses of their hearts, some of the agony of their condition and make us wonder, `What if I'd been born as one of them?'
The rest of the cast is made up of MGM stock players Leila Hyams, Wallace Ford, Edward Brophy, Olga Baclanova and the screen's champion stutterer Roscoe Ates.
The plot is simple. A beautiful trapeze artist marries a dwarf for his money, then plots his murder with her lover, the circus strong man. The subsequent action is both horrifying & strangely satisfying. Various scenes - the Freaks' Banquet, the chase through the storm - are among the most bizarre ever filmed. You won't soon forget the time you spend with the FREAKS.
