Review of Freaks (1932) by Patrick S — 22 Feb 2010

Every so often some director would hit it big with some movie. That gives them a free pass from the studio to make their next film to be whatever they want. More often than not, those films are massive failures that either severely damaged or completely destroy the director's career. Gus Van Sant followed up Good Will Hunting with the infamous shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, Greg Mottola followed up Superbad with Adventureland and Steven Seagal followed Under Siege with On Deadly Ground and here we have one of the earliest examples of this Freaks. You see in 1931 Tod Browning directed the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula and that was massively successful so he followed that up with Freaks, the topic of this review, a love letter to his old circus days with the sideshow freaks as the focus. Of course, his career was ruined by this and Freaks was massively butchered but what survives is a pretty good movie.

This is pretty much one of those "day in the life" movies about what goes on at the circus. I put day in the life in quotes since it takes place over a period of time but the sentiment is about right. So it's mostly a soap opera on the circus performers and all the love and other things that happens in a soap. But the main crutch of the story is that the midget Hans has acquired a crush on the Trapeze artist Cleopatra. But Cleopatra just laughs at him behind his back and she wouldn't even acknowledge him if he didn't keep giving her fancy gifts. Then Cleopatra finds out that he has this huge-ass inheritance so she and her real lover, Hercules the Strongman, conspire to marry and kill Hans. However, the other freaks get wind of this, their code of honor makes it necessary for them to step in and stop this evil plan.

The draw of this movie is basically the freaks themselves. We got midgets, pinheads and one guy without limbs but is the most badass limbless guy ever who rolls a cigarette with his mouth...motherfucker! And for the most part, it truly is a sweet movie before it becomes all horrific and freaky. Sure the message is just a stock "Look at these deformed, weird people and see how they're basically human!" and "The real people are the true monsters"! but it is one of the first to do that type of message even if the real construct was butchered beyond all hope.

Since this movie was made in the 1930's and the story is all in broad strokes, the acting isn't going to be a masterpiece of subtlety but then again, why should it. Most of the cast were real-life circus people with those real-life deformities so those guys ability to act is secondary. However, I'm not going to dismiss the acting since in the terms of a soap-opera/comic book type of story, it does work. It's a bit jarring for them to be all over-the-top and theatrical but it's not something it would work any other way. But there is one failure with that and that's when Hercules punches a hermaphrodite in the face. It's supposed to be horrifying and shocking but the way it's shot, blocked and acted just makes it hilarious.

At its present runtime of 62 minutes cut from a rumored 90 minutes, this movie should obviously be much better. It should obviously flesh out the people a lot more and it should obviously make the message more clearer. But what we do have is a very nice circus slice-of-life with a far-out ending made with soap-opera tendencies. Also, Master from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is in this...how awesome is that!