I have to thank the Ramones for introducing me toFreaks.
Their chant Gabba gabba.
I loved the side show at Coney Island.
Freak shows are cons.
Con artists put on the best shows.
He brought nuance and empathy to his monsters.
Sometimes his monsters werent as monstrous as the people around them.
Sometimes they were more glamorous.
They certainly could be more magnetic.
People forget today that Bela Lugosi made women swoon in BrowningsDracula.
Irving Thalberg, the studios production head, wanted him to make Arsene Lupin with John Barrymore.
Browning suggested they get the rights to Tod Robbins 1923 magazine short story Spurs.
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Browning cast carnival performers and real people with deformities instead of using makeup.
Earles was the one who suggested using the magazine story to Browning.
His sister, Daisy Earles, is heartbreaking as Frieda.
She is as much hurt for Han as she is for herself when she sees him degraded.
Barnum sideshow performer who had tetra-amelia syndrome.
The multilingual performer would ultimately have four daughters and a son with Princess Sarah.
The Siamese Twins were played by Daisy and Violet Hilton.
The Hilton sisters had been performing in Europe since they were three, but their management kept their money.
They tap-danced with Bob Hope as the Dancemedians in 1926.
The sisters were discovered dead in 1969 of Hong Kong flu.
The forensics report said Daisy died first and Violet died two to four days later.
Half Boy was played by Johnny Eck, the Gooney Bird from Tarzan pictures.
Eck was a sideshow performer, actor, artist, photographer, illusionist and ran a penny arcade.
Leonardo DiCaprio has been trying to make a movie out of the story of his life since the 1990s.
Cowboy actor Wallace Ford, who appeared in more than 200 movies, plays the sensitive clown Phroso.
Former concert violinist Roscoe Ates stuttered jealously as Roscoe.
Freaksis a soap opera, likePeyton PlaceorGeneral Hospital.
They protect themselves from normal people.
The people they perform alongside.
The freaks lives are full and joyous.
The freaks have their normal moments and some are quite beautiful.
The Bearded Lady has a baby.
They celebrate and relax together.
But they aspire to the bourgeoisie.
Jealousy and the desire to fit in are the downfall of the circus freak.
They dont realize I am a man.
With the same feelings they have, Han says, clearly identifying himself from the outside.
Man is still they, not we.
We emerge into the film as outsiders looking at the most curious of curiosities.
We quickly become immersed in the world within the world.
The freaks are outsiders in a world of outsiders, a society within a society, the traveling circus.
The normal performers are also outsiders.
Always on the road.
In a mobile world, they are long-time neighbors.
For the most part they get along like any community.
The sword-swallower and the others see them get up, go to work and go to bed.
The normal performers lives are no picnic either.
At least the pinheads get to have a picnic.
The regular people in the circus dont present a good case for normal.
They are jealous, petty and sometimes abusive to themselves and to the freaks.
Let her try doing anything to one of us.
She dont know about us, Frieda foreshadows.
Cleopatra swings down off her trapeze to net Han and share his life and inheritance.
After the wedding, the freaks decide to initiate Cleopatra into their society of outsiders.
They cheerily chant Gooba gabba.
As they pass her a loving cup.
But Cleo is scared to be one of them, scared to be associated with dirty, slimy freaks.
She humiliates the love-struck Han, which is a grievous offense.
Ill never forget what you are doing for me, he warns her.
Coppers dont have imaginations, Venus threatens Hercules after she gets wise to whats going on.
This is a very frightening prospect in a world of imagination, the circus.
The freaks even supply their own incidental music, a simple descending pattern on a recorder.
The first sign of trouble is a switchblade.
The soap opera turns dark.
Doom grows as another undersized enforcer cleans his gun with his handkerchief.
The freaks equalize the fight.
They bring down Hercules with that switchblade.
The atmosphere is swallowed in the shadows of mud and feathers.
The code of the freaks is upheld in one of the most suspenseful sequences in cinema.
Audiences at the time hated it.
It was banned in England for thirty years.
Moviegoers stayed away in droves.
Tod Brownings career never recovered.
The United States National Film Registry chose to preserveFreaksin 1994.
Bravo TV ranked it number 15 on its list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
One of us, was nominated by the American Film Institute for one of its most memorable movie quotes.
Freaksis social commentary personified.
It is an almost anthropological study of social class.
It could be read as commentary on slavery, on fascism, on child abuse.
It is one of Brownings most personal films.
It is moving and powerful and youll never look at freaks the same way again after seeing it.
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Rating:
5 out of 5
