Freaks (1932)

 

Freaks (1932)

 

Todd Browning was one of the most important of all American Filmmakers, and specifically one of the greatest Horror Film Directors who ever lived. His career crossed from the silent to the sound, and that curtain is sometimes unbreachable for fans, so many of his most notable works, like his collaborations with Actor Lon Chaney, Sr, are honored but sadly unwatched (worse still, many his films are lost, but that’s another story). Chaney died so early in the sound era, his best work with Browning and others have mostly slipped into obscurity as well.

 

Only seven of his sixty-two Directorial credits were “Talkies.” unfortunately, Chaney was involved in none of these, as he died in 1930, but two of these Talkies are still widely watched: His landmark version of “Dracula” (1931), which I must say, though it is a heresy, underwhelms me. Then there’s this one, arguably his greatest achievement, but it also, sadly, the one that destroyed his career. He was at the height of his popularity was he made this film, but the scandal it caused made it difficult to get other projects green-lighted or distributed. He was expelled from cinema after 1939, even though he lived to 1963.

 

Though in no way autobiographical, this was an intensely personal film for him, drawing one his own, more than slightly eccentric, life experience. As a boy, Browning had literally run away from home to join the Circus. He was the son of a well-to-do family, but at age sixteen he fell in love with a Performer and scandalously joined her troupe where he worked as a Clown.

 

Sometime later, leaving the Circus behind, he became a Director of a Variety Theater and while there met the legendary film Director D.W. Griffith, who inspired him to become an Actor. Browning’s film debut (only as an extra) was in Griffith’s “Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages” (1916) one of filmmaking’s all-time landmarks for its innovations, ambitious story-telling, and the fact the out-of-control cost over-runs made it the new industry’s then-worst-ever financial disaster. It would not be a stretch to suggest that “Freaks” was to Browning as “Intolerance…” was to Griffith, both were at the peaks of their careers immediately before, neither fully recovered after, and both of these disastrous projects are now viewed as among the both Directors’ greatest achievements.

 

Under Griffith’s tutelage, Browning turned to Directing the very next year. The struggling Griffith was still producing notable work in 1919-1921, but then his already shaky career went into more rapid decline; it was also during those three years that Browning became a major Director, enjoying increased budgets, cementing his collaboration with Actor Chaney, and making a number of films distinguished by strong female leads and unusual psychological depth. Griffith’s last, unsuccessful, feature film was “The Struggle” (1931) the very year of Browning’s most famous success, “Dracula.”

 

“Freaks” was Browning’s almost-immediate follow up to “Dracula.” It’s based on the short-story "Spurs" Tod Robbins (1923). Browning was a fan Robbins’ work, his novel “The Unholy Three” (1917) was the basis for the successful of the Browning/Chaney collaboration, “The Unholy Three” (1925). The original story had a smaller cast of characters and some Supernatural elements the Browning excluded. The Scriptwriter was Waldemar Young, who also worked on “The Unholy Three,” but this was a passion project for Browning, he’d been developing the script since at least 1927 and there were additional talented Writers who contributed (not all of whom were credited) including Elliott Clawson, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Woolf, Al Boasberg and Charles MacArthur.

 

The film has an effective framing device. It begins on the customers’ side of the curtain at a carnival, with a Barker (Murray Kinnell) is guiding the customers into a tent. Inside is “the most astounding, the most amazing, living monstrosity of all time.” A female customer gets a look at the thing and screams in horror. Then, before the film audience is allowed to see this Beast, the barker begins to tell the tale of how it came to be, and the scene dissolves into a flashback that will take up most of the rest of the film.

 

So, we’ve been warned up-front that this is a Horror film, but importantly, but it will not be really be a Horror film again for quite some time. First, we linger on the other side of the Carnival curtain, where the customers never get to go. The film is as much about daily life in the circus as anything else, and this is presented in an almost Documentary style. Overwhelmingly, it focuses on the Performers from the Freak-Show, weaving in the main plot, the Horror/Revenge film, at leisurely pace.

 

All the Circus Freak characters in the film were played by actual Circus Freak Show Performers. The camera didn’t shy away from physical deformities, but instead lovingly demonstrates them in their own micro-society of mutually supporting and mostly honorable people. A deft move by Browning, he never shows his freaks on stage, they are never “on display” in the conventional sense, though obviously they are because this is a movie. Still, we’re completely seduced into the illusion that we’ve been welcomed into their lives; magically, we’re not like the customers from the first scene. The only thing “on display,” in the conventional sense, is the Beast we will have to wait whole movie to behold.

 

The Freaks, even the unattractive ones, become beautiful, while the real Monsters are “Normal” people who are conventionally, even strikingly, attractive. They are the female Trapeze Artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) and her secret lover, Hercules the Strong Man (Henry Victor).

 

Cleopatra is aware that Dwarf Hans (Harry Earles), is deeply insecure about his deformity and equally, deeply, smitten with her. Hans is about become rich through inheritance (it is unstated, but strongly suggested, the family he’s getting the money from was a family that turned their back on him earlier in life). Cleopatra and Hercules hatch a plan to seduce Hans away from his lover, another Dwarf named Freida (Daisy Earles, Actor Earles Real-World sister, an odd bit of casting that should’ve raised more eyebrows than it did), marry him, murder him, and run off together with the money.  

 

Cleopatra, a sloppy drunk who lacks impulse control, ruins her own plan. When the Freaks open their hearts to accept her into their tribe, she’s horrified and turns on them viciously. These leads directly to the murder plot being exposed, and the Freaks take horrific Revenge on the Evil Doers.

 

The public revulsion of this film was extraordinary, and driven seems to be driven by two things.

 

First, and most famously, the era when the film was released was filmed with people unable to look upon the deformities. To tell this part of the story, I have to give some of the tumultuous background on how this film got made and what happened after.

 

All the major movie studios were in competition, but between Universal and MGM took on the form of something like a blood-feud. Universal was winning, but MGM was always snipping at its heels. Universal seemed to hire all the best talent, but MGM would then snatch them up because Universal treated their best with such disrespect. They had been particularly shabby to Chaney, and his friend Browning knew it.

 

Universal owned the Monster movie market, they had so since the near back-to-back hits of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923 film) and “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925), both with Chaney in the lead, and would continue to dominate even after his death, “The Wolf Man” (1941) starring his son, Lon Chaney Jr. After that, the quality of the films started dropping off precipitously because much of the best talent had moved on.

 

MGM’s “wonder-boy,” Irving Thalberg, the Head of Production and a first-class Talent Snatcher, and wanted a piece of Universal’s Monster Pie. After Browning’s huge success with “Dracula,” he tempted Browning (who was, in fact, an MGM alumnus) away from Universal by offering him one thing Universal would never promise him, Creative Freedom. Without that promise, “Freaks” would’ve never come to be.

 

Thalberg’s boss, Louis B. Mayer (the second capital “M” in MGM), was vehemently opposed to the project from the moment the rights to the story was purchased, and his objections only got worse with time.

 

Casting of the “freak” characters should’ve been a challenge, but Browning knew where to find them, in every side-show and circus in America, and they were all seasoned professionals. Casting the “normal” characters proved more difficult, as Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow and Victor McLaglen all "balked" at co-starring with "sideshow exhibitions."

 

Even during filming, the freak performers were made less-than-welcome in the cafeteria, and there was even a movement by some studio employees to have production stopped. Through it all, Thalberg remained loyal to his promise to Browning and saved the filming repeatedly.

 

The first test screenings in January 1932 were disastrous. One woman threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage. That’s where Browning’s creative control came to an end. The film was originally 90-minutes long, the studio cut about 30 minutes out and the excised footage was then burned and lost forever.

 

The cuts weren’t a butcher job, but fans of this film lust to know what Browning’s original vision was. Even after the cuts, the Freaks taking their Revenge is strong stuff, but was far more brutal in the original. In addition to the violence, comedic sequences were removed, as well as the original, dark, epilogue. A happier ending was added, as well as the framing story I mentioned above.

 

The shortened version premiered in February 1932, and it was still broadly reviled. A critic for “Harrison's Reports” wrote, "Any one who considers this entertainment should be placed in the pathological ward in some hospital."

 

John C. Moffitt of the Kanas City Star wrote, "There is no excuse for this picture. It took a weak mind to produce it and it takes a strong stomach to look at it."

 

Variety stated that the story "does not thrill and at the same time does not please, since it is impossible for the normal man or woman to sympathize with the aspiring midget.”

 

The Boston Herald, while condemning the film, accidently articulated why it was a masterpiece, “It is the sort of thing that, once seen, lurks in the dark places of the mind, cropping up every so often with a dourful persistence."

 

I also can’t ignore the real world around it. The 1920s and 1930s were the era when the Pseudo-Science of Eugenics held the most sway in the USA, with deep and terrible impacts on both Medicine and Law Nationwide. Eugenics specific goal was to selectively breed a new Human Race so that these Freaks, other social miscreants, and even minority Ethnic Groups and Religions, would wholly disappear in a few generations time. The methodology was usually forced Sterilization, but Euthanizing Mental and Physical Defectives was not unheard of. (Our country’s Eugenics Laws proved a huge inspiration for Adolph Hitler, who became Chancellor of Germany the same year this film was released). There is more than one version of this film, but the one that got the broadest distribution has a long title card added after Browning lost control of the project, it bluntly hints that Eugenics is a good thing, and soon, these ugly Freaks will disappear.

 

“Freaks” was banned in many states, guaranteeing it would be a huge financial failure, and the ban in the United Kingdom lasted for 30 years. It became the only MGM film ever to be pulled from release before its domestic engagements were over.

 

Mayer’s hatred for the film was restrained only by his loyalty to Thalberg, but after Thalberg's death in 1936, Mayer hit the film with another indignity, he removed the MGM name and sold the rights to an independent distributor. (If you watch it today, the MGM name is back, and the studio is quite proud of it, though they no longer own the rights.)

 

Browning continued to work for MGM, but was in poor standing. Of his last four films, two are gems: “Mark of the Vampire” (1935) a comedic version of “London After Midnight” (1927), an earlier MGM success and the second time that Bela Lugosi took over a Chaney role (the other was “Dracula,” long story, leave that for another day). The other was “The Devil Doll” (1936) another Revenge film with some notably heart-warming scenes contrasting sharply with the plot’s cruel under-pinnings, and incorporating SF elements that allowed some Surrealism to enter in such a manner that they didn’t confuse or alienate the audience. His last film with MGM is one I haven’t seen, a comedic mystery titled, “Miracles for Sale” (1939). Despite the film doing fairly well at the box office and with critics, his contract was up and Thalberg was no longer there to protect him. He was dropped by the studio and spent the remaining decades of his life an alcoholic recluse.

 

The above facts are well documented, and a primal disgust at looking upon those who looked different is clearly a big part of both “Freaks” plot and its troubled history. But here I have to break with most other writers, because personally, I doubt that was the main driver of this disaster. I think there’s something going on that was unmentionable then, and remains mostly unmentionable even today.

 

I say the revulsion was really driven by the fact that the film truly terrified people in ways Browning had never anticipated. This was a film that ultimately became about Vigilante Violence, and, as every school child knows, Vigilantism is Bad, but at the same time, our media can’t stop celebrating it.  The celebration of the Vigilante has been a prevalent theme in cinema since at least the first adaptation of “The Count of Monte Cristo” (1908) and probably earlier. But the audience reacts one way when the Vigilantism reasserts the accepted and expected order (when representatives the Strong Lynch the Uppity Weak) but here the Violence reverses or destroys the accepted and expected Order and the Weak Lynch the Strong.

 

So, for a moment, I must digress…

 

I do love the movie “Deathwish” (1974), but I can’t deny it is bluntly Racist and Cruel, and even more perversely, it made the Villain of the original novel (written by Brian Garfield, first published in 1972) into a true-blue American Hero. The Vigilante killer in “Deathwish” was Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), who was White, upper-middle class, with a lovely apartment in a semi-affluent neighborhood, where he lived with his beautiful wife and daughter…

 

Well, at least until that terrible day that those Vicious Street Thugs broke in.

 

Before the movie is over, Kersey has single-handedly lowered New York City’s crime-rate by hunting down and summarily executing fourteen Muggers who just happened to be overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic.

 

Make no mistake, as much as we are seduced by Vigilantes, there is a wide and deep river of Terrorism running their hearts. Here in the USA, the longest functioning Terrorist Conspiracy is that of the Ku Klux Klan (founded 1865 and politically powerful, though in decline, in 1932), and though their primary targets have always been Blacks, they have terrorized other groups as well. The KKK has always claimed they were protecting the innocent as they Lynched and estimated 3,446 Blacks and 1,297 Whites during its first century of operation.

 

There was a time when KKK Terrorism was highly praised, at least by some, notedly Browning’s mentor D.W. Griffith in the film, “Birth of a Nation” (1915), a landmark of both cinematic achievement and deep Moral Depravity. But the KKK was also always hated by a much larger group, and anti-KKK films go way back as well. (Ironically, it was Griffith, himself, who made one of the first anti-KKK films, “The Rose of Kentucky” (1911), but it is completely overshadowed by his landmark pro-KKK film.)

 

There was (and still is) a distinct difference between pro-and anti-KKK fiction, or maybe I should say White Supremacist, fiction, that goes beyond the obvious race politics. For the most part the pro- celebrated Vigilantism and Lynching in any form, not just the politically motivated kind; meanwhile the anti- treated the idea of Lynching with a universal repugnance, an act so evil that you were not allowed to do it even to a White Supremacist who had already Lynched somebody else.

 

So, now I test you.

 

Can you think of a Vigilante/Revenge movie where Heroic Blacks kill evil Whites?

 

Not too difficult question, I know you can name a few, but they are few and far between.

 

Tougher question, can name one that was released before 1971?

 

I know I can’t. I can name films where heroic Blacks are taking revenge on evil Blacks, heroic Whites taking revenge on evil Whites, heroic Whites taking revenge on evil Blacks, but not a single instance of heroic Blacks taking revenge on evil Whites before the near simultaneous release of “Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song” and “Shaft.”

 

In the media, when the Color Lines were crossed with acts that could never be forgiven, Whites seem to be entitled to be Paul Keresy, but Blacks seem to have an obligation to be as virtuous as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, if they were gonna battle injustice. And I’m not saying emulating Dr. King is bad thing, just that there’s a double-standard.

 

The climax of “Freaks” holds visceral power even today. The Freaks were appealing, often cute, early in the picture, but when they turn Vigilante against their Oppressors, they become Terrorist Monsters. For mainstream audience to accepting that, would be akin to justifying the Violence of anti-Slavery Terrorist Nat Turner, whose Drunken Mob of the Exploited who killed only Civilians, most children, including babies in their cribs.

 

(The elevation of Turner eventually did happen, but not until 2016 with the snidely titled film “The Birth of a Nation,” which was almost as Historically Inaccurate as the 1915 film by Griffith).

 

When we, in the audience, choose overlook the evils of Vigilantism, we want a strong level of identification with the Good man (or woman) who does Bad. We want to be able to see him (or her) as “one of us,” just someone who was pushed too far. Director Browning was clearly aware of this, one can see his leisurely telling as the process of creating identification, but he failed to anticipate that he couldn’t bridge the divide between “Normal” and “Freak” enough to prepare the audience for what came later.

 

With a Vigilante we’re supposed like, we usually want to see what was stolen from him (or her) before the bloodbath begins. This was certainly true in both “Birth of a Nation” and “Deathwish.”  Does Browning do this?

 

This requires a comparison to the first half of “Birth of a Nation.” For those who know the film only by reputation, you’ll be surprised to find out it was pro-Lincoln, anti-Confederate and anti-Slavery. It was patronizing to Blacks, but not viciously Racist. It was far more concerned with the tragedy of two families, once close, torn apart by the Civil War. These families are reunited by the end of hostilities between North and South and by two engagements of marriage. The battle scenes are exciting, the romantic scenes touching, and it has justly earned much praise for Griffith’s remarkable story-telling skills as he shows us things are shaping up to be a beautiful new life for everyone…

 

Well, at least until that terrible day that the evil Blacks (White Actors in face make-up) decide they want all the White women for themselves and are just itching to take them by force. That’s the second half of the film, the pro-KKK part, so the actual point of the movie, and that is why it is so justly reviled.

 

In “Freaks,” there a lotta life unfolding among the side-characters we are introduced to before the Horror begins:

 

There’s completely limbless “Living Torso,” Prince Randian (mis-billed as Rardion), demonstrating that he is capable of rolling a cigar using only his lips. The “Armless Wonder,” Martha Morris, who casually uses a knife and a fork with her toes. The “Siamese Twins,” Daisy and Violet Hilton, who both get engaged to be married, and some sly references to how both women feel both men’s embrace. The “Bearded Lady,” Olga Roderick, and the “Human Skeleton,” Peter Robinson are already married, and are blessed with a child. “Koo-Koo the Bird Girl,” Minnie Woolsey, who suffered from Virchow-Seckel syndrome, or “bird-headed dwarfism,” who dances for us at Hans and Cleopatra’s wedding party, which will go horrible badly because of Cleopatra, and is the films single most famous scene.

 

Some, disingenuous, critics accused Browning of exploiting the Freaks (who really shouldn’t be called that, but that is how they were, and still are, referred). These complaints often came from that camp that was afraid to see them at all, that did not want to acknowledge that deformities (again, a wrong word, I should say disabilities) even exist. But Browning placed these Characters dead center, they seemingly unconsciously negotiating their challenges, are relaxed with who they were, and who they were with.

 

Browning even included a couple nice “normal” people (call them “tokens”). One was an obvious stand-in for Browning himself, Phroso the Clown (Wallace Ford) who showed the Freak show performers some all-too-rare decency and very gently jokes about how their sexual longings are no different than his own (there’s even a pun alluding to birth-control, and that might have been the last such pun in cinema until the 1960s). He’s romancing Venus (Leila Hyams), another strikingly beautiful Acrobat, who is smart enough not to trust Cleopatra.

 

This brings us to the wedding party, the one that Koo Koo danced at, which Critic Gary Giddins described as, “one of the unforgettable episodes in world cinema.”

 

As the camera circles the congregants, dwarf Angeleno (Angelo Rossetti), climbs a top the table and (with an uncertain gait that was a product of his condition) moves toward Cleopatra bearing a huge loving cup. All those around are slamming their cups on the table and chanting:

 

One of us
One of us
Gooble gobble
Gooble gobble
We accept her
We accept her
One of us
One of us

 

And Cleopatra freaks out.  "Filthy, slimy, freaks!" she screams. She tosses the drink at her Coworkers, who are people she lives with on the road.

 

There’s just no coming back from a scene like that.

 

Cleopatra’s plan was to slowly poison Hans. Hans and his community realize this and plot their revenge. In an extraordinary sequence that would cause Browning a world of trouble later, they strike in the dark night, during a thunderstorm. Browning empowers his misfits with their communal action, in other words, they’re a Lynch Mob. Depending on your comfort with these marginalized humans, they are either elevated like “Deathwish’s” Paul Kersey or demonized like Terrorist Nat Turner (these days, I’m confident the audience would side with the Freaks way more than they did in 1932).

 

Both Cleopatra and Hercules try to escape, but the Freaks are everywhere. Most are diminutive, forced to slither and crawl through the mud, but they are armed with knives. Hercules is soon toppled onto his back. There is the memorable, horrific, image of limbless Prince Randian, moving like a snake, closing in on the strong-man who is on his level now. Randian has a knife in his mouth and is about to demonstrate what a man who can roll a cigar with his lips can do with a deadly weapon.

 

And Cleopatra’s fate is worse. This is when we return to the framing story with the Barker and see what made the customer scream in horror.

 

The film has many technical virtues. Browning’s “Dracula” was inhibited because an overly static camera and indifferent editing (not usually a problem for Browning) and his obvious discomfort with the new medium of sound. (Universal’s other great monster of “Dracula’s” year, “Frankenstein,” directed by James Whale, had marvelous sound effects and camera movements, and it holds up better now, eighty-or-so years later.) “Freaks,” on all these counts, this film is superior to “Dracula,” especially the sound. Though he still mostly avoided a musical score, most scenes are alive with a cacophony of noise, capturing the controlled chaos of the circus.  The environmental noise never interferes with the dialogue, and in some scenes, like the wedding banquet, the dialogue is the cacophony itself, which was, in its day, a huge innovation.

 

Perhaps Browning’s discomfort with sound persisted, and maybe it guided his choices to bold things. The actual dialogue is spare, chants and eerie whistles dominate, but the film remains solidly grounded in the visual, and as I suggested above, in a manner more dynamic than “Dracula,” far more like his silent films.

 

 

Horror, and other, cinema would have to change a lot before audiences were ready for this movie. It became a Counter-Culture favorite in the early 1960s, an era when Hammer films succeeded in crashing Censorship barriers, making both their Sex and Violence more explicit, but still not quite ready to apply that to works of seriousness.

 

“Freaks” was a serious film, so even in the ‘60s, still ahead of its time. It became a Midnight Movie favorite in the 1970s, a decade more in love with the Revenge film because of Urban Bankruptcy and the Disco Infernos. Revenge films dominated the emerging Grindhouse market and Mainstream, elevated to art with more sophisticated scripts and bold new narrative techniques. “Deathwish” was not mere Racist and Cruel, it also had a lot perceptive things to say about America’s Terror of our society descending into Barbarism, even as it seemed to love that fall. Paul Kersey was a complex Character, and every step on his road loving husband to mass murder was carefully marked and wholly believable. Other films that brought greater artistry and thoughtfulness to our lowest primal lusts were “Straw Dogs” (1971), “High Plains Drifter” (1973), “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974), “Carrie,” “The Outlaw Josey Whales” (both 1976), “Rolling Thunder” (1977), “Mad Max” (1979), and yes, even “The Count of Monte Cristo” made a reappearance (1975).

 

“Freaks,” rediscovered, was finally, justly, praised, and in 1994, it was  selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

 

These days, this once obscure film is endlessly referenced in popular culture. My favorite is the Ramones song, “Pinhead” (1977) which was directly inspired by the film and transformed the chant “gooble gobble” into “gabba gabba hey,” made famous by the irresistibly silly film “Rock 'n' Roll High School” (1979).

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA