The controversial classic set in a carnival sideshow and starring a cast of real life dwarfs and deformities. Most classify Freaks as horror, but it only becomes a horror film in its last ten minutes. Before that, it’s a soap opera, like a mini-Grand Hotel, but instead of ritzy art deco Berlin, you get a grimy carnival and instead of Garbo, Crawford, and Barrymore, you get “half-man” Johnny Eck, conjoined twins the Hilton Sisters, and German dwarf Harry Earles. For much of the film, director Tod Browning—an ex-carny himself—merely roams the carnival’s tents and trailers to observe a typical day at the freak show. The performers are portrayed as charming and funny. Browning’s affection for these people rings true and it’s what makes this a great movie. No dwarf, pinhead, or limbless wonder is ever laughed at or denigrated here. The villain of this film is Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), the trapeze artist, physically normal in every way, who leads on Hans the dwarf (Harry Earles) so she can marry him and collect the fortune he’s set to inherit.
Like many cult films, people HATED this in its original release. The mere sight of some of the performers turned stomachs. MGM saw fit to chop out roughly thirty minutes of material—now considered lost forever—deemed too disturbing. England banned it for forty years. Consequently, it sunk Tod Browning’s career, despite his huge success with Dracula the year previous. It took thirty years and the 1960s counterculture for Freaks to finally find an appreciative audience.